Scottish Referendum conspiracy video proves vote was rigged?

A conspiracy video is circulating the Internet that claims to show “proof” that would “stand up in court” that the Scottish independence vote in September 2014 was rigged.

The video shows 3 instances of what the narrator claims is undeniable proof that the vote was rigged so that the “No” [for independence] vote would prove victorious.

The 3 instances are –
1. A picture of a bulk of “Yes” ballots on a table marked “No”.
2. A video of a one of the voting centre staff filling out “No” ballot votes himself.
3. A video of a female vote counter placing “Yes” votes in the “No” pile.

You can watch an instance of the video on YouTube here.

A picture of a bulk of “Yes” ballots on a table marked “No”

The picture (below) shows an image taken from Sky News footage of the vote, that appears to show “Yes” votes being put on a “No” table, thus illicitly adding to the “No” vote.

However, according to the Yes campaign in Dundee, the image actually shows piles of unsorted ballot papers that were temporarily placed on the table before being apportioned to specific counters.

The “Yes Dundee” campaign (the campaign that lost the national vote) themselves explained that the votes were unsorted, from their official Twitter account, and did not show anything suspicious or dubious.

A video of a one of the voting centre staff filling out “No” ballot votes himself

The video shows a man who appears to be working in a voting centre from a distance filling out information on paper or card. Still image below.

However from the video you cannot make out what he is doing or what he is writing on, thus is not proof of anything whatsoever, and common sense would suggest he is performing a much more innocent task than what is suggested in the video.

If the vote was somehow rigged one would conclude that it would be illogical to create fake ballot papers in the voting centre itself, at the time of the vote, and in full view of other voting staff and the media.

A video of a female vote counter placing “Yes” votes in the “No” pile

This video shows a voting counter place one ballot from the “No” pile onto the “Yes” pile and then what appears to be two ballots from the “Yes” pile onto the “No” pile. (note that in many versions of this conspiracy video the same clip is repeated, unintentionally giving the impression to some that the woman continued to perform this action multiple times, when it only happened one time)

Whilst it is difficult to determine in the 2/3 second clip what exactly is going on, despite the claims made by the video narrator, this video does not provide “proof that would stand up in court” because you simply cannot determine what is happening, including what is on each ballot paper being moved from the pile.

Since you cannot see what is on each ballot paper, the viewer can only speculate what is happening, to which an attempt at electoral fraud is only one possibility, and perhaps a distant possibility at that. The voting process was closely scrutinised by officials from both parties, impartial officials as well as the media, and one could argue that if you were planning on placing “Yes” votes in the “No” pile, you wouldn’t first place them in the correct pile and then move them into the incorrect pile, which is what would have had to happen if that was what the video depicted (you’d surely place the ballot papers straight onto the incorrect pile thus lessening the chance of drawing suspicion.) One could say that more likely options were this video depicting a mistake by the counter, or her own process of counting votes that a video clip a handful of seconds long would not make obvious.

Of course this is just speculation but what we can positively say is that nothing on this video proves anything at all, despite the claims by many a conspiracy theorist.

As with many conspiracy theory videos in the same vain, this video shows incidents that have many possible explanations of which are both mundane and innocent, but the narrator of the video has dressed it up as “irrefutable proof” of a conspiracy. But when it is looked at with a critical mind, it is anything but.

The fact is that the entire process was closely watched by a number of different people and considering the vote was won by a substantial 380,000+ votes this would have required a large number of people – from both parties – including impartial counters, police and media to either have been in on the conspiracy or to turn a blind eye to the wrongdoings.

Both parties have been happy with the validity of the outcome of the referendum, including Alex Salmond. A spokesperson for the chief counting officer said in a statement –

Yes it is important that elections are held fairly and legitimately, and that we have as many safeguards in place to ensure a fair vote count, and that any suspicious activity is looked at and – if warranted – investigated. However given all the information above we can only conclude that a rigged election on this scale is too implausible to be considered seriously, and this conspiracy video proves nothing to the contrary.

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