Few companies will benefit more than DRS if AV is passed:

Fervent AV supporter Neil Kinnock took 29,408 shares in the company 18 months ago.

Lord Kinnock…..lovely, lovely, lovely

Following disturbing revelations last week about material benefit accruing to AV enthusiasts, The Slog can exclusively reveal this morning that major AV supporter Lord Kinnock is a non-Executive Director of electoral counting suppliers DRS – one of  two major players in the sector.

If the Alternative Vote referendum wins the day in May, only two players will benefit from the need to count more votes – Electoral Reform Services and DRS. The two outfits have created a joint venture company IntElect specifically to gear up for the expected win. But what AV enthusiasts may not have known until now is that fellow-traveller  and former Labour Party leader Lord Kinnock owns nearly 30,000 shares in DRS.

The evidence….other shareholdings have been obliterated to protect the innocent

DRS  is keen to maximise IntElect’s AV opportunity. Its website entry of February 11th 2011 promises that IntElect will be ‘on hand to provide advice on reducing the administrative burden of elections’. Especially via the selling of its automatic vote-counting machinery.

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When did Neil Kinnock first become an enthusiastic supporter of electoral reform? We can’t say with certainty – but we do know that he joined the Board of electoral counting suppliers DRS as a Non-Exec in March 2005. DRS – a major international data capture Group turning over more than £15 million – has been having a bad time of late. Sales were down 15% in the 2009 fiscal, and losses of nearly £1 million were recorded.

But towards the end of that year – prior to the AV-boosting General Election of May 2010 – Lord Kinnock decided to take the plunge and obtain 30,000 shares.

In fact, the Welsh peer has earned his crust for DRS pretty much from Day One. Five months after clinching a non-Exec with the Group in 2005, Kinnock was telling Wales online that

“I want PR not only maintained in Wales but extended to Westminster, but the party list top up system is something I have always been against.”

That’s a shame really Neil, because the German List system is my own particular favourite: the list system requires seats allocation after an electoral poll, not more votes to be cast during the poll. So I think that’s less messy and less prone to voter fatigue – although not quite so good for business, if you’re in the vote-counting trade.

And now in 2011, Lord Kinnock’s conversion to AV remains undimmed:

“In the Labour Yes campaign we are building support for AV because the change will bring fresh vigour to elections and greater confidence in democracy. The increasing support for AV- especially among young people – is very encouraging. We know that it will grow further because, with AV, every vote counts” Neil Kinnock said at the launch of Labour Yes! last month.

Yes! Yes! Yes! Every lovely lovely vote counted counts!

Many years before, Neil’s fervour was less apparent. After the PR reform group Charter 88 was formed in and around the Labour Commons corridors under Kinnock’s leadership, DRS’s non-Exec tub-thumper famously dismissed them as “chatttering whiners and whingers”.