Video which claims to prove Scottish referendum vote rigged – Pride’s Purge

Obviously there’s a lot of reaction to the Scotland referendum on the web. This is interesting from Pride’s Purge: I have no idea what to make of this. But here’s a video which claims to prove there was rigging of the Scottish referendum results. The later part of the video which clearly shows YES ballot papers piled under a NO sign is particularly interesting: What do you think? The counting could have been simply the way that particular person was putting votes together. The ‘Yes’ votes in a ‘No’ pile is not as easy to excuse, though. Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

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27 thoughts on “Video which claims to prove Scottish referendum vote rigged – Pride’s Purge

  1. Steve Kind

    The video looks pretty obviously doctored to me – it’s looped and it looks suspiciously as though some portions are reversed. The counts were all open to observers on both sides and fraud of this sort would be *very* hard to get away with. The commentary is also hard to take seriously. Prepared to be wrong – but I think it’s a red herring like most conspiracy theories.

    1. Mike Sivier Post author

      Not sure I understand your meaning.
      Does it help to know that this video has been debunked?
      (I think it had been debunked before I posted the article, but I only found this out afterwards. Sometimes the internet is slow.)

    1. Mike Sivier Post author

      That’s good to know. I’m glad that Vox Political readers and fellow bloggers are happy to debunk what I can’t!

      1. hstorm

        I wanted a Yes vote, but I don’t want the Scots to arrive at it via paranoia and lies. It only destroys credibility of the process, and undermines democratic realities.

      2. Mike Sivier Post author

        I reckon this applies more to the pensions issue that was also raised. The video is well and truly debunked; that’s a lost cause.
        With the pensions, we’ve got both sides saying the others were lying. The ‘Yes’ camp reckoned Gordon Brown was scaremongering, even though he had the National Association of Pension Funds backing him up. The ‘No’ camp said that there were issues which the ‘Yes’ people had not addressed, and I have yet to see any evidence that this assertion was inaccurate, but it was greeted with a huge amount of bile and bluster.
        So: Paranoia and lies.

  2. paulrutherford8

    I tweeted this video on the night and had someone from the ‘Yes’ camp more or less immediately tell me the yes votes on no pile were uncounted votes. I still don’t know what to really think as I tend to cynicism about the whole referendum anyway.

    In my view the 3 ‘main’ parties were united to keep Scotland part of the UK as the Scottish oil revenues underpin the whole UK economy, allowing the level of borrowing to be maintained. Without the oil, there would have been massive economic problems.

    The 3 parties were saying Scotland would have had the economic troubles, but they wouldn’t have. It would have been rUK which would have been hit… VERY badly indeed.

    There was NO WAY the ‘establishment’ was going to allow Scotland to go. I’m certain about that and believe a lot of ‘no’ votes were because of fear of economic collapse. Which was true… but it would have been rUK’s collapse.

    Like so much in the world these days, it really was ‘all about oil’.

    This is well worth a [belated?] read…
    http://www.neweconomics.org/blog/entry/scottish-independence-uk-dependency

      1. paulrutherford8

        Your comment refered to a tweet from the same ‘yes’ supporting person/people/organisation/whatever that pointed out to me that the vid showed unsorted votes.
        That any clearer?

      2. Mike Sivier Post author

        I should point out that a few people’s comments are getting marked as ‘spam’ by WordPress, meaning I didn’t notice them until now. That’s why this confusion arose.

  3. Boldeefett Loxx

    I have no doubt if the vote was rigged it was done a long time before the ballot papers arrived to be counted. I have seen this video plastered all over Facebook by some of my friends along with other posts to indicate that the Yes vote cannot take defeat graciously, I have replied with the same link “hstorm” has posted here and they still don’t want to believe it.

    This video goes into my “Ignore this conspiracy theory” pile with the likes of 9/11 planes were holograms and all 9/11 witnesses were suffering from mass hallucinations and I am somewhat of a conspiracy theorist as I have stated to Mike on his FB page along with many others.

    Sadly there are more videos of right wing nationalists being violent and abusive, the same sort of people who you will probably find are members of right wing organisations but no this is representative of all people that voted NO, I knew all this would happen if there was a NO vote which was on the cards if you had bothered to look at reliable pollsters such as Ipsos-Mori who are usually very accurate.

    According to YES campaigners Scotland was going to become a land of milk and honey should they win and Dante’s inferno should they lose, what they didn’t see was that they would be screwed either way just by a different slave master, I told my FB friends this and their logic was they didn’t care as long as they were Scottish slave masters – what kind of logic is that, I ask you? Independence for independence’ sake and screw the consequences, well I’m not sure that’s how the majority looked at it and for not having this skewed logic the NO voters are being accused of all manner of insults which are not deserving of the majority.

    1. Steve Kind

      I think that you should maybe read the posts debunking this hoax – which have come largely from YES supporters (indeed, the YES campaign itself was the first to dismiss it) before you start using this thread to continue the anti-independence rant. And are you suggesting that the videos of right-wing unionist violence should not be posted?

      1. Boldeefett Loxx

        Steve you have completely misinterpreted my response, I have seen and agree with Dundee Yes who debunked the video showing the yes votes in the no pile I saw it very early on, my point about this is that even though the yes campaign debunked it some yes voters are still not interested in facts and use the video as evidence of vote rigging.

        I am not anti independence by any stretch of the imagination, however I am a realist that understands that elections are pre decided by powers beyond our governments as it suits their agenda. My comments about the land of milk and honey are from my experiences on Facebook where a lot of people I know there who were voting yes had a rather bizarre idea of how things would work out should yes win that I considered unrealistic.

        I fully support the posting of right wing violence it is clear these people are the same people that promote sectarian violence which does nothing for Scotland or the Union.

      2. Steve Kind

        Thanks for the clarification – I see what you are saying. Have to say though from my experience on FB I have found YES supporters *on the whole* to be the realists, as opposed to the cynics, in the debate. Of course one hopes for the best when pursuing one’s dreams.

  4. creatorsnotconsumers

    Having done some ballot counting in my time, there comes a time when your brain goes ga ga and putting the wrong ballot on the wrong pile is a sure sign to take a break. The other clip clearly shows a banner announcing the total number of votes and the % turnout, this was done on the night before the counting began. Dumping them all on a table with a ‘NO’ sign on it may well have been an error of judgement but it was definitely pre-count. It also happens I was watching at the time this occurred.

    1. Mike Sivier Post author

      They were all being watched hawkishly by any number of people, all of whom had a strong interest in the count being fair and un-rigged, you know.

  5. John

    As a former councillor who has attended numerous counts, I can say that the people involved in the counting are local government officers who have no political axes to grind.
    Don’t forget that these counts were held overnight and some of the counters may well have been feeling tired at some stages.
    The video footage – which is on a repeat loop for some bizarre reason – shows only that the counter seemed to have mistakenly placed 2 – just 2 – ballot papers in the incorrect wire baskets, and then realised her error and placed them in the correct baskets.
    That’s it – that is all we are seeing on the video.
    I can also say that these counted ballot papers are subjected to double checking before they are bundled into 1,000 vote bundles so it is possible to pick up errors then too.
    The final section, where bundles of Yes votes were positioned above a No label can easily be explained as their final resting place after the count was over.
    Let’s not forget that the eventual outcome was largely in line with poll predictions and that they followed a general voting pattern right across Scotland, where only 4 councils voted Yes and 28 voted No.
    This vote has to be one of the easiest ever as there were two possible votes: Yes or No. By comparison, local and national elections can have up to 6 possible alternative votes on each ballot paper so errors are much more likely in their case.
    Why the commenter has a North American accent I cannot say but it is interesting to note that he had and that no British person has made these foolish accusation.

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