Postal voting fraud

I can 100% relate to this in my last election campaign. I reported all the facts to Council and Police with the evidence, but sadly nothing again was done. Why has this borough not got the balls to stand up against Asian politics ? and, sad to say, my confidence in politics has now gone. I have seen votes tip-exed, postal votes collected ,and one of the more worrying "Temporary postal votes collected in bulk on the day and Asian men voting on white girls cards; " the Candidate coming into polling stations with temporary votes 2 for her and 2  for her aid ! 50 temporary votes in one ward should show a cause for concern ???

Any Scottish people living in England who try to do postal votes in the Independence referendum may be fined £5000 and sent to jail for a year.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/referendum-news/armchair-voters-could-swing-it.23509729

That seems a bit harsh, why shouldn't Scottish voters be given similar cultural sensitivity consideration?

With enough feet 'under the table' it is a simple matter to turn back the clock to 'rotten' wards. You're dealing with a different culture. That takes time to eradicate what has been the norm. Bribery and corruption are seen as 'normal' in many Asian countries. Getting what you want, in this case your man 'in', is all that matters. No holds barred so to speak. You can't blame the perpetrators - it's the system that allows it that's at fault.  

I can imagine the astonishment on some people's faces when they learned how the postal vote system worked and realised within a few seconds how easy it would be to manipulate. I can't believe it is still allowed in its present form.

I've just listened to the Radio 4 programme and it makes some startling comments on how robust (or not) our voting system is. I still think that it concentrated on the wrong issue, though.

Out-and-out ballot stealing is a scandal that needs far tougher measures to try to eradicate it but, as the programme said, it is rare and also quite difficult to organise on any scale. With postal votes it is a lot easier and with the huge increase in the numbers of postal voters it has also become seen as more worthwhile and harder to monitor. The Labour government were warned about all this when they pushed the legislation through Parliament but chose to ignore it. In 2004 they even introduced 100% postal voting in 'pilot' areas of the UK that were mostly where there were local elections in Labour-leaning authorities on the same day as the Euro-elections. This is when Hinch's example of vote stealing on an industrial scale occurred in Birmingham and a vote-processing factory had been set up under some railway arches. But this is still fare from the main problem.

I was looking recently at some online copies of The Times from the mid 19th century. After the municipal elections each year there would be a report covering several columns of the newspaper each year simply listing the elections that were going to be disputed in court. For over a hundred years these dwindled away to almost none and then recently there have been a slowly rising trickle of cases again.

It suddenly dawned on me the reason why. In the mid 19th century there was no such thing as a secret ballot and for many people in the electorate (those with postal votes) the same is true again. Court cases had trailed off because there was little point in treating, bribing or intimidating a voter when you couldn't know how they voted anyway. Well, now you can. The sanctity of the polling booth has been removed and voters are now subject to all sorts of both malign and benign influences in how they cast their ballot.

"The detail was badly thought out." Might make a suitable inscription above the entrance door to Parliament.

Hinch wrote:It would not solve all the issues but as a start, no party worker should be allowed to handle any filled, incomplete or blank ballot papers other than their own and it should be a serious criminal offence to do so.[/size]

It's already a flagrant breach of the Electoral Commission's Code of Conduct (paragraphs 20 an 21) for any party worker or candidate's agent to do any of this. But I agree, the sooner it is incorporated into the actual law the better - along with bringing back the original criteria for being allowed to vote by post.

There already is quite a lot of legislation, but you're right to suggest that it's almost worthless without the will to employ it.

I have probably mentioned this before but there was a case in a neighbouring borough a few years ago where suspicious patterns in postal vote applications were reported to the police who then dutifully had all the postal votes from one polling district were fingerprinted when they were returned. Over 150 of them had the same person's fingerprints on them and yet the CPS decided not to proceed with the case any further because it "wasn't in the public interest".

And this year in Rochdale I hope the sales of Tippex are being carefully monitored, especially if it is being bought by the bucketful.

Just received my postal voting forms for the European MP - - - ! But - But I don't want a European MP! In this day of mass surveillance and super-duper technology you would think they would 'know' that - surely???