Postal votes 'led to fraud'
The High Court has ruled there was "widespread fraud" involved in the election of six Labour councillors in Birmingham last year.
Richard Mawrey QC, sitting as an election commissioner, attacked the postal voting system he said had enabled vote-rigging in last June's local elections.
In his ruling he said: "The system is wide open to fraud and any would-be political fraudster knows that it's wide open to fraud."
Mawrey is due to decide whether the election of the six councillors accused of corrupt and illegal practices should be overturned.
Two petitions were raised against the councillors last month.
The first against the Bordesley Green ward representatives - Shafaq Ahmed, Shah Jahan and Ayaz Khan - by the People's Justice Party.
The three men walked out of the hearing on the first day after Mawrey refused an application for an adjournment to allow them further time to prepare their case.
This followed news that the Labour Party has withdrawn legal funding support for all six councillors.
Deception
The second petition was raised against three Aston representatives - Mohammed Islam, Muhammed Afzal and Mohammed Kazi - by local Liberal Democrat supporters.
All six councillors strenuously denied rigging the ballots and being improperly elected.
The court heard evidence of wholesale theft of votes in the city, with thousands of postal ballots being diverted to a "safe house" where they were filled in on an "industrial scale".
Petitioners accused the defendants of using forgery and deception to collect and amend thousands of votes. The petitioners also accused the city's returning officer and chief executive, Lin Homer, of failing to discharge her duties in accordance with electoral law.
The hearings were viewed as test cases because of complaints about postal voting irregularities in other parts of the country. The ruling comes as record numbers of electors are applying for postal votes ahead of the general election.
Action urged
Liberal Democrat president Simon Hughes called for election laws to be overhauled.
"The Electoral Commission must now take action to ensure that people are aware of how to protect their votes from theft," he said.
A spokesperson for the Electoral Reform Society said: "We do not believe that electoral fraud is confined to Birmingham, to the Labour party or, most importantly, to particular communities. This is a problem that we believe may be widespread in this country.
"We have seen cases recently in Blackburn, Guildford and Hackney involving people from very different backgrounds and each of the major parties. We dispute the view put about that there is little fraud because few people are being charged."
"The system is wide open to fraud and any would-be political fraudster knows that it's wide open to fraud"
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