Charles Moore ‘voted’ twice as a public service. Why send the police after him?

Shortly before the referendum, Charles Moore emailed me with an idea: he’d always thought how worryingly easy it would be for someone like him, registered in two addresses, to vote twice. So he proposed to do so, and then write it up in the magazine – to flag up weaknesses in our system. As he writes in this week’s magazine:

In Sussex, I went to the polling station early. I took my polling card, which is not compulsory, and asked the clerk what the significance of the barcode on it was. He had no idea, so presumably it has no security function (or the clerks are poorly trained). I voted to leave the European Union. Then I caught a train to London, where I went to my local polling station. There I presented my London polling card, unchallenged. I went into the booth and wrote on the ballot paper ‘I am spoiling my ballot because I have voted already.