Postal votes scam casts a dark shadow over cradle of democracy

LAST June, the voters of Birmingham went to the polls in what proved to be an extraordinary election to their local council.

Large numbers of genuine voters turned up at polling stations to vote in the locals only to learn that they could not be given a ballot paper.

Unknown to themselves they had been put on the postal voters’ list, sent a postal ballot and, to their surprise, had in fact already cast a postal vote in the election.

Later at the election count in three north Birmingham wards there were chaotic scenes.

When the results were declared, to the amazement of all the other parties, Labour candidates were returned with a large swing in their favour. Even more surprising was that Labour seemed to have a large swing in its favour in wards with substantial Muslim populations who were strongly opposed to the Labour party because of the Iraq war.

Something was amiss. Eleven months later a local court finally got to hear a challenge by some of the losing parties and the true extent of what was amiss was revealed.

Over four weeks Richard Mawrey QC, sitting as an election commissioner, heard details of massive and systematic election fraud perpetrated by Britain’s governing party.

He found there was overwhelming evidence that in the weeks before polling day, the local Labour party had been involved in the theft of thousands of postal ballots which they diverted to a ‘safe house’ where they were filled out on “an industrial scale”.

Describing it as an episode which would embarrass a banana republic, he ordered a re-run of the elections and found six Labour councillors guilty of various electoral offences.

The judge was clear that the local Labour party had sanctioned and overseen the postal vote-rigging operation. “Fraud of this magnitude,” he said, “requires a considerable degree of organisation and manpower, not to mention supervision and co-ordination. It would be unthinkable for it to be the work of a few hothead activists working behind the backs of the candidates and their party.”

He was also clear that the operation was not confined to the two wards on which he was asked to rule, but rather had been implemented as part of a Birmingham-wide campaign by the Labour party through the use of bogus postal votes to counter the adverse effect of the Iraq war on its electoral fortunes.

Birmingham was not an isolated incident. In Blackburn, a Labour activist is currently serving a sentence of three years and seven months in jail for a similar offence. And the Labour party weren’t the only culprits.

The Electoral Reform Society says that in places like Bradford, Blackburn, Guildford and Hackney investigations have revealed suspected forgery of postal votes involving people of all parties and of all backgrounds in local elections held on the same day.

Today, as the whole of Britain votes in a general election, the findings of the Birmingham court are of more than academic interest. The origins of the current risk to Britain’s electoral system lies in a decision by the Blair government in 2000 to change the law so as to allow anyone on the electoral roll to vote by post. Before then only those with a justifiable reason, such as being housebound, could vote by post, but now wholesale postal voting is available on demand.

Following this change 1.7 million electors voted by post in the 2001 Westminster election. However, this time out there has been an unprecedented flood of last minute applications and now 6.5 million people have applied for postal votes. It is expected that one in six of the votes cast in today’s election will be postal ballots.

In the key marginals the rate of postal voting will be even higher; in some places it has reached almost 50%. In Cheadle, for example, where the margin in 2001 was just 33 votes, about 10,000 postal votes have been applied for.

Postal voting is a convenient way for many people who cannot be in their constituencies on election day to cast a vote. Extending this facility to as many people as possible is in theory always a good idea.

However, as is often the case when politicians design the rules of their own sport, the Labour government and the Westminster parliament failed to put in place any real safeguards. They expanded it in an unsafe way, left it open to exploitation and have caused widespread concern about the security, integrity and secrecy of the British electoral system. In the words of Richard Mawrey QC, the postal vote system is now “wide open to fraud and would-be political fraudsters know that it is wide open to fraud”.

HERE in Ireland we have also dramatically increased the facility to vote by post in the last decade. Historically this facility was available only to gardaí, members of the armed forces and to civil servants posted abroad. It is now open to anyone who establishes that because of their occupation, studies or physical impairment, they cannot attend the polling station where they are registered on polling day. The application to vote by post must be accompanied by documentation from an employer, or college or doctor, as appropriate, to verify the reason the postal vote is required. The ballot paper must be posted to the address where the voter is on the register.

When the voter receives the postal ballot they must go to the local garda station, show the blank ballot paper, establish their identity to the garda and have him or her sign a certificate of identification. Then, having completed the ballot in secret, the voter must seal the ballot envelope in the garda’s presence. While some might think it overbearing it allows the advantages of postal voting to be extended in a manner which still protects the secrecy of the ballot and ensures that it is completed by the real voter.

By comparison, in Britain, anyone can simply print off an application form from the internet and apply to their county council to be put on the postal vote list without establishing any particular reason. Strangely, they can have the postal votes sent to an address other than that at which they are registered and anyone can witness their certificate of identity. There is no need to go to the trouble of going to a police station or any official premises.

This also means there is no real protection that the real voter cast the ballot or that he or she did so in private. It is precisely these weaknesses which the Labour party in Birmingham exploited so easily.

For the first time international election monitors have been officially invited to observe tonight’s election count in Britain. Meanwhile, the main political parties have muscled up their organisations with lawyers and some are speculating that a whole series of legal challenges to the result in marginal constituencies will be launched in the coming weeks.

If tonight’s result is closer than most commentators expect, then Britain could find its reputation as the cradle of democracy dragged through its electoral courts. It could be a constitutional and electoral crisis on the scale as that in which the US found itself over hanging chads in Florida in the 2000 presidential election.