who now what now?
Oct. 26th, 2012 01:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadgerThis is preposterous.
People living in the United States but born in and citizens of Venezuela were allowed to vote in the recent, contentious elections there. US citizens who live abroad are voting now in our (hopefully less danger-fraught but still contentious) elections next month. Those nice Venezuelan people, despite many of them having lived here for years, cannot vote in our presidential election (unless they have become dual nationals, which is not an easy thing to do, as the US disfavours that citizenship category).
But apparently, Scots-born persons who reside in the far-flung reaches of Carlisle or Berwick-on-Tweed will not be eligible to vote in the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, while all sorts of folk form Bangor, Ballymena, and Basingstoke who have an address in Dundee, Dunbar, or Dunfermline can help decide the fate of a nation they might not be citizens of.
The article suggests that "it's difficult to imagine how an electoral register of everyone who considered themselves a Scot might be drawn up." Well, yes, but then nations rarely leave it to personal preference to decide who is or is not a citizen (a fact that lies at the heart of pretty much all immigration debates). The most commonly adopted metric is whether one is born within the geographical boundaries of the state (usually to include any foreign dominions, if a country has such). There's no question what the borders of Scotland are. Anyone who claims UK citizenship presumably has a birth certificate that shows where they were born. Some substantial number are naturalised citizens; those cases, indeed, would need some sort of mechanism to adjudicate. But it was pretty easy for the authors of the BBC piece to state that around 400,000 non-Scots will get to vote int eh referendum, while 800,000 Scots will not. That, to my mind, is completely ridiculous.
People living in the United States but born in and citizens of Venezuela were allowed to vote in the recent, contentious elections there. US citizens who live abroad are voting now in our (hopefully less danger-fraught but still contentious) elections next month. Those nice Venezuelan people, despite many of them having lived here for years, cannot vote in our presidential election (unless they have become dual nationals, which is not an easy thing to do, as the US disfavours that citizenship category).
But apparently, Scots-born persons who reside in the far-flung reaches of Carlisle or Berwick-on-Tweed will not be eligible to vote in the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, while all sorts of folk form Bangor, Ballymena, and Basingstoke who have an address in Dundee, Dunbar, or Dunfermline can help decide the fate of a nation they might not be citizens of.
The article suggests that "it's difficult to imagine how an electoral register of everyone who considered themselves a Scot might be drawn up." Well, yes, but then nations rarely leave it to personal preference to decide who is or is not a citizen (a fact that lies at the heart of pretty much all immigration debates). The most commonly adopted metric is whether one is born within the geographical boundaries of the state (usually to include any foreign dominions, if a country has such). There's no question what the borders of Scotland are. Anyone who claims UK citizenship presumably has a birth certificate that shows where they were born. Some substantial number are naturalised citizens; those cases, indeed, would need some sort of mechanism to adjudicate. But it was pretty easy for the authors of the BBC piece to state that around 400,000 non-Scots will get to vote int eh referendum, while 800,000 Scots will not. That, to my mind, is completely ridiculous.
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no subject
Date: 2012-10-26 06:36 pm (UTC)Those who were born elsewhere but living in Scotland will be considered to be Scottish - and if the vote goes for a "yes", they will be entitled to Scottish citizenship.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-27 09:52 am (UTC)Currently, there is no such thing as Scottish citizenship, so there is no record of who would have it if it existed.
Personally, I feel that having lived in a country for ten years or more should carry more significance than whether you were born there.
We're used to oddities where Scotland is concerned. Scots get to vote for MPs in the UK parliament and in the Scottish parliament as well.
Scots currently have more rights over the English than the English have over the Scots. (I'm not one of those who see it as a particular problem, I'm just saying the system has oddities)
I'm pretty neutral on Scottish independence myself. Financially, they're probably better off as part of the UK, so I guess I ought to hope they vote for independence to save England money, but I like the historical connections between our countries and would be happy for it to continue. (My grandmother was born in Scotland)
no subject
Date: 2012-10-27 12:27 pm (UTC)Who said anyone had to examine anything? You act as if a registration mechanism would have to be entirely invented. It already exists. If someone wants to vote, they have to be enrolled, and there's a mechanism for doing that.
In fact, I found the website for the UK Electoral Commission, and I was able to register to vote in the UK myself!
OK, obviously I didn't complete the registration, but anyone can register to vote in the UK online without offering any proof of eligibility. Presumably there is a process somewhere for challenging invalid registrations, but it's entirely invisible on that site if there is.
Part of the online registration process requires one to select the basis under which one qualifies to be enrolled and state one's address; all one would need to do is add a question asking place of birth (or citizenship of parents, or length of residence, or whatever).
Currently, there is no such thing as Scottish citizenship, so there is no record of who would have it if it existed.
No, but there are records of birth (or residency, or parentage, or whatever one wanted to use that as a qualifier). It's ridiculous to throw up one's hands, as the BBC article does, and say "Oh, there's no way to figure it out; it's just too hard!" in a society as record-laden as a modern Western economy is bound to be.