Postal voting under police scrutiny

There have been two further recent reports of police investigations into postal vote allegations:

Police to investigate claims of postal vote fraud in council poll
… A complaint has been sent by the Conservative party to Derbyshire police about suspected fraud in the Sinfin ward in the Derby City Council local elections – which will be held on May 6, the same day as the General Election.

The complaint involves concerns that a voter was approached by men requesting her to fill in and sign three postal voting forms in favour of the Labour party… (Derby Telegraph)

Police probe ‘voting fraud’ at Bethnal Green & Bow
DETECTIVES have interviewed an election agent this week who lodged complaints of bogus voters being registered by rival political parties in London’s East End in the run-up to next Thursday’s polling.

The election agent for George Galloway’s Respect Party, Rob Hoveman, reported the allegations to police and made a statement on Tuesday to Scotland Yard’s SO15 Special Branch.

Officers came down to Bow Road police offices in the Bethnal Green & Bow constituency where he raised the issue of bogus voters at ‘mail drop’ addresses. (East London Advertiser)

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10 Comments

  • Postal voting should only be restricted to those who can’t physically get to a polling station.

  • Silent Hunter 30th Apr '10 - 4:55pm

    Here we go . . . The Labour Party’s Postal Votes Scam swings into action; as predicted.

    I hope the Lib Dems (& indeed, the Tories) are on the look out for this corruption – Labour will stop at nothing to retain power.

  • Andrew Suffield 30th Apr '10 - 4:56pm

    Sadly, postal voting is actually more secure and experiences less fraud than polling stations in the UK.

    This is more a reflection on how bad our polling stations are than how good our postal vote system is. It pretty much comes down to who the returning officer is in your district. Many of them are careful and chase down all the issues; others just want to go home and will let people get away with anything. There seems to be remarkably little oversight of them.

    Fortunately, we’ve never had a major issue with electoral fraud in the UK. Unfortunately, we’re not very well equipped to deal with one.

  • Labour are v. corrupt in Bethnal Green and Bow. Postal votes are sold to the highest bidder (i.e. Labour)

  • I’ve also seen Respect volunteers rounding up Bengali students (who can vote) for their postal vote. So this protesting by Galloway is a bit hypocritical.

  • Foregone Conclusion 30th Apr '10 - 5:12pm

    Galloway? Hypocritical? I would never have thought it!

  • Tony Greaves 30th Apr '10 - 5:21pm

    This is baloney balderdash and similar words. Not to say there isn’t any fraud at polling stations, but postal voting is almost completely insecure.

    Tony Greaves

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