Electoral fraud

Bob

Just make sure the ballots don't go missing like they did in Glenrothes so that any fraud can be uncovered.

pete-s

I have had grave doubts about the electoral system for some time. I dislike our secret system whereby with machine readers it can be easily analysed who voted for whom. I want an anonymous system, as I no longer trust council officials. If this means that the postal system has to go and only voting by ballot box is allowed then so be it. If this disenfranchises a few people, tough.

2trueblue

Is there any level they will not stoop to? Obviously not. Maybe we need an outside force to oversee our elections.
So all of a sudden thousands of people discovered they were not going to be able to get to the polls? Pull the other one.

Hamid Karzai

Hey need a bit of help? My electoral commission stands ready to fly to UK at moments notice.

Yam Yam

Postal voting on demand - chalk up one more New Labour initiative that Cameron must promptly scrap once he's inside Downing Street.

Mirtha Tidville

Now lets see...unfettered immigration plus voting papers `on demand`......nah couldnt be....

Owly

Labour seeks more postal voting and a reduction in opening hours at polling stations in the countryside - they are the past masters at rigging the system to suit their voters.

Postal voting must be outlawed.

richardj

First we have the 2005 election manifesto promise of a referendum denied, then an unelected Prime Minister from a minor part of the nation installed and now regular vote rigging - no doubt the country gets what it deserves.

Wilhelm

Jimmy Carter, the United Nations should check the Glasgow votes.

I wouldnt trust liebour an inch.

John Wright

G Brown has been in the cabinet for 13 years and is now to make his first speech on the immigration problem. Bet it will be even longer before he makes a speech about electoral postal fraud because it is the only possible way he will have any chance in the next election.

Thomas Widmann

In Denmark you have to go the town hall if you need to vote in advance because you won't be available on the day of voting.
In the town hall there will be a staffed voting booth just like the ones used for normal voting later, and you put your ballot paper into a sealed box that is only opened after the polls have closed.
In that way, fraud is almost impossible. The downside, of course, is that people have to go to the town hall instead of voting from the comfort of their homes.

Dennis Churchill

Proxy voting should be the preferred option for people unable to vote in person.
Random audits of postal votes should take place to ensure the details are correct and the person was entitled to vote.
Wasn’t there a complaint by the BNP that seals were removed from ballot boxes when they were stored overnight during the Greater London Elections?

Chris Paul

This seems to be speculative nonsense. People with PVs are about three times as likely to vote as those without. Weather doesn't intervene. Holidays don't. Illness doesn't. Work doesn't. Can't be bothered less likely. Which is why all parties in close run seats try to get their known or likely supporters on PV. Conflating a perfectly logical optimisation exercise with cheating seems sloppy and ignorant. I repeat: sloppy and ignorant.

Watt Tyler

"Now, the Orange Blog may be being mischievous or merely preposterous, but it suggests that fraud could be a factor."

Please note just HOW the established media hackery rule out the possibility of election fraud happening in the UK. This is probably due to the clinging belief that the Labour party is not mendacious at heart. Even though there is evidence of electoral fraud, Mirtha Tidville, and its linkage to a further reaching agenda, it won't be acknowledged.

theprofromdover

Didn't Douglas Alexander set this postal-voting train in motion.
Same guy who spends bucket-loads on marketing in foreign-aid, and nothing on actual aid.

Why isn't he Gollum's heir-apparent?
He ticks so many boxes........

Frizby

We need to bring our troops home. Here is a questionable democracy that is falling into the hands of dictators.

Number7

Chris Paul,

And Party Activists are very helpful when filling in these complicated forms.

Chris lancashire

Postal Voting has too often already lead to fraud. We need to return to the previous, more stringent system before a PV is granted.

This is unlikely to happen whilst Jack straw remains Justice Minister. His Blackburn constituency has a high level of PVs.

Michael Booth

There was hardly any fraud under the old, tried and tested system whereby you presented yourself at a ballot station and cast your vote physically. The question that no one asks is... who is involved in postal vote fraud? How does this fraud manifest itself? Are there identifiable patterns to this type of fraud? Who are the usual suspects?

anne allan

Cue another set of lost registers.

Riccardo

In the last GE there were some 18,000 postal votes issued in Solihull, a figure far out of line with other constituencies. The seat went narrowly to the Lib dems, on a huge swing from the Tories not seen in any neighbouring seats. To my astonishment, no one, not the local media or even the losing Tories, questioned this. Chris Paul will say I am sloppy and ignorant, that this was "optimisation" in a marginal seat. But, ahem, it wasn't a marginal seat. Expect a lot more of this next year. The machinery for ensuring fair elections is so weak. In particular examples of fraud (eg Birmingham City Council) have never resulted in re-run elections and prison sentences, which of course they should. Outside observers are needed. Shocking but true.

Chris Paul

Number 7 LOL.

Nonetheless, the fact that parties of all stripes have seen their activists trying to and sometimes succeeding and sometimes being caught in gaming - which I acknowledge en passant - this means of voting doesn't mean that we should stick with a voting system seeing falling turn outs. We should improve PV security is what we should do.

The headline "Electoral Fraud" is the perfect tip for an iceberg of innuendo. Parties with activity on the ground all try to make sure PVs are optimised, whether this is people who are ill or certain to be away under conditional systems, or anyone who would benefit under later systems.

The writer seems to be way behind the curve and suggesting that those with PVs must be pretending to be poorly. Not so.

And let's not forget proxy voting. A party in Manchester had around a dozen of those out of one flat on the patch, with elected councillors voting for many of them and known activists for the others. This was not Labour. And it is a marginal.

We need to be vigilant. But making it harder than needs be for people to vote should not be part of any reasonable approach. There is a perfectly sensible explanation for the rise in PVs seen in very closely contested seat and it is NOT "electoral fraud".

This journalism IMO is tawdry, partisan, ignorant tosh.

Carroll Barry-Walsh

Four changes are needed: -

1. All voter registration needs be made in person on an individual not a household basis.
2. Postal votes should only be granted for a limited number of specific reasons e.g. a genuine disability, supported by evidence, which should be verified. There should be no automatic entitlement to a postal vote.
3. Votes should be be counted immediately after the polls close. If there is a need to delay counting e.g. in very remote constituencies the ballot boxes should be kept under lock and key by the police.
4. If the voter records go missing (as in Glenrothes) then the election must be rerun.

Ken

@Chris Paul:
Suggest you do a little digging before making an ass of yourself...
BBC Monday, 4 April, 2005, 13:59 GMT 14:59 UK
"Postal votes 'wide-open to fraud'
The judge in a vote-rigging trial says the postal voting system is "wide open to fraud" and has strongly attacked the government's attitude to the problem.
Richard Mawrey QC was speaking as he ruled there had been "widespread fraud" in six Birmingham council seats won last year by Labour.
He accused the government of being not only complacent, but "in denial", about the failings of the system.

More people than ever are preparing to vote by post in the general election....."

The Liebour tribalists WILL use fraud if its the only way to keep their welfare gravy train on the rails.

The once revered British parliamentary democracy has been totally traduced.

.... .... ......

Let Scotland have Labour....they're welcome to the lot...Vote one get the rest free.

Judy

Paypal, Tesco, Amazon, Ebay and the like manage to run online sites involving cash transactions by more customers than the entire UK electorate without the level of fraud that's come out of postal voting.

Why can the UK not switch to universal online voting (provided that the contract for setting it up goes to a firm that's got a track record with one of these commercial firms, rather than a UK govt IT contractor)?

If this was combined with compulsory voting (including the option "none of the above") then we might be rid of both low polls and mass voting frauds. There's no reason why public ventures shouldn't be run as effectively as major world-class commercial ones. It would also put paid to the success of the BNP, all of whose electoral successes have been based on mass abstentions by mainstream voters.

mac

"Conflating a perfectly logical optimisation exercise . . . "

Utterly predictable claptrap from an arch New Labour apologist.
Ha! "optimisation exercise", indeed. Yes, why not, it's an appropriate Newspeak idiom to describe New Labour's manipulative postal voting scam in Glenrothes, Springburn and any other constituency where conning naive, gullible, browbeaten or downright clientist electors serves the Labour Party's authoritarianism.

Can't be wrong, can it, if it serves the noble purpose of the party which is "political wing of the British People?"

St Bruno

http://www.sundaymercury.net
Postal vote fraud rocks Birmingham by-election in Sparkbrook
Sep 19 2009 By Paul Dale
Police are investigating the worst outbreak of voter fraud at a Birmingham City Council election for five years.
Almost 400 postal votes cast at Thursday’s Sparkbrook ward by-election – a third of the total issued – were rejected as likely forgeries.
Council officials, backed by the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties, called in the police after saying they suspected an organised plot to influence the result of the by-election, which was won by Respect candidate Shokat Ali.
In 2004, Birmingham was likened to a “banana republic” by Elections Commissioner Richard Mawrey QC, who investigated hundreds of forged ballot papers at that year’s city council elections.
Birmingham Labour leader Sir Albert Bore said those behind the alleged fraud at Sparkbrook had attempted to destroy the electoral process.
Sir Albert added: “Nearly 400 postal vote ballot papers were rejected because of inconsistencies in either the date of birth or the signature of the elector.
“It is appalling that even after a number of very public concerns and enquires into postal vote fraud, the election process in Sparkbrook has been undermined by individuals who have, in a number of ways, attempted to submit postal vote ballot papers of electors other than themselves.
“The fact that around 30 per cent of all postal votes cast – and there were almost 1,800 postal votes cast in this by-election – were rejected clearly illustrates the magnitude of the fraud being perpetuated.
“Birmingham’s reputation for honesty and integrity at election times has again been undermined.”
John Hemming, Liberal Democrat MP for Yardley, who chairs his party’s group on the city council, said: “I want to know whose votes were forged. Postal voting is a criminal offence and this needs to be sorted out”.
Respect Party leader and Sparkbrook councillor Salma Yaqoob raised the possibility with police of fraud during the run-up to polling day after discovering that some Respect supporters hadn’t received their postal voting forms. She suspected ballot papers might have been stolen.
Coun Yaqoob said: “I am very concerned that so many postal votes were rejected by the returning officer. An investigation must be held. If it turns out that fraud was involved, anyone responsible should face prosecution.
“But the truth is that the whole postal vote system is wide open to abuse. For so long as it remains, someone, somewhere, will find a way to bend the rules.
“I won cross-party support last year for an approach to the government asking them to scrap postal voting in Birmingham. The Government really needs to act on this call now to prevent our electoral system being undermined.”
The city council introduced new computer-based checks on postal votes after Mr Mawrey’s damning report into the 2004 elections.
At one stage during the Sparkbrook by-election count half of all postal votes cast were held back for detailed checks after tellers became suspicious.
A council spokesman said: “The apparently significant volume of postal votes rejected provides clear evidence that our new security measures are having a real impact on ensuring the integrity of election counts in Birmingham is preserved.
“As soon as the number of rejected votes started to become apparent we immediately contacted the police, and will work alongside them in any resulting investigation which follows.”
The full result at Sparkbrook, Birmingham September 2009 by-election:
Ali Shokat (Resp): 2495
Mohammed Azim (Lab): 2228
Abdul Kadir (Con): 799
Naeem Qureshi (Lib Dem): 506
Charles Alldrick (Green): 213
Sakander Mahmood (Ind): 55

Fergus Pickering

Chris Paul, do you suppose that in a muslim household using postal votes the women will get to vote freely and in secret? Do you?

Florence of Arabia

In Blackburn, or wherever the hell his constituency is, Jack Straw is probably known as "Uncle".

Keith

There should be no postal voting at all.

Dave666

Did Labour have observers at the recent Afghan election to brush up on their techniques?

EC

The biggest electoral fraud is the gerrymandered constituency boundaries. How else did NuLab win 90+ more seats in England in 2005 with fewer votes!

Ian Walker

Sorry to get out my old broken record again, but with the Single Transferrable Vote (STV) system, electoral fraud becomes a lot harder, since the scale of fraud required to materially affect the outcome would be so huge as to be unavoidably obvious.

David Ossitt

Dennis Churchill

"Proxy voting should be the preferred option for people unable to vote in person."

So you will be happy that every muslim patriarch will have a multitude of votes?

Mike

The BBC Today progamme informed me this morning that Labour had held on to Glasgow NE 'with a slightly reduced majority' Later we got the numbers - 13,000 down to 8000. Only the Beeb would present that as 'slight'.

greenslime3

We should adopt a version of the Australian system and make it a legal requirement to vote. If people want to protest, they can spoil their vote but it should be a requirement for them to participate in the process.

greenslime3

And postal voting should not be permitted. It should be a requirement to turn up, in person, and put the folded paper in the box. A system could be devised to visit the homes of people who are unable to attend due to illness, infirmity or absence.

JohnAnt

Mike - "Later we got the numbers - 13,000 down to 8000." I don't see where they got those figures. The official result of the 2005 election gave Martin a majority of 10,000; but Labour's percentage share today is higher - 59.4% as against 53.3% in 2005.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_North_East_%28UK_Parliament_constituency%29

The SNP and BNP share each increased slightly.

But what a miserably low turnout!

Verity

I agree with Greenslime3 that we should adopt the Aussie system. People living in a democracy should be made to get up off the couch or slide off the barstool and damn well go and vote.

I have a question, though. What on earth are all these immigrants to Britain doing with votes to determine who runs our country and how? Who cares what they think? If they don't like the way the owners of the country vote, I am sure no one would object to the Exchequer paying for a one-way ticket out for them.