Trimble warns of massive SF voting fraud

Sinn Fein is involved in a voting fraud on a massive scale in Northern Ireland, Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble said today.

With republicans and his Ulster Unionists expected to run each other close in a number of key constituencies, Mr Trimble said Sinn Fein’s abuse of the electoral system had gone unchecked.

It involved the use of postal and proxy votes, said Mr Trimble, who has threatened to quit as First Minister of the power-sharing executive at the Stormont Assembly unless the IRA begin disarming their weapons by July 1.

"There is every reason to believe it is happening on a massive scale with regard to the seats Sinn Fein is targeting," he said.

"They have been working on it for years and government has not been treating the issue seriously enough, because it cannot be combated without some significant changes to electoral law."

Sinn Fein hopes to poll well in a number of seats, including north Belfast, Fermanagh-South Tyrone, Newry-Armagh, but particularly in West Tyrone, which has a huge nationalist majority and where the party is involved in a bitter fight with the SDLP.

It is understood that thousands of postal and proxy votes have been issued Unionists claim that most are as a result of fraud and will be used to support republican candidates.

One electoral officer has been suspended amid republican claims of a cover-up involving inquiries into the distribution of copied postal votes to Unionists in advance of the election being called.

Mr Trimble said the Government had failed to act to stop the cheating.

He said in Belfast: "After the last general election there was an inquiry by the Northern Ireland select committee which produced a report containing measures to defeat it. But the Home Office did nothing.

"It was the same thing under the last Conservative Government. We pressed the Conservatives. They said they would do something about it. Nothing was done. It really needs to be tackled, because fraud is also happening in England on a massive scale."