Postal vote system 'fatally flawed'

Finding a Conservative councillor guilty of electoral fraud, a judge has said that the rules for postal voting are "fatally flawed" and could lead to widespread vote rigging in May's local polls.

 

Richard Mawrey QC said that postal voting on demand was "lethal to the democratic process" just weeks before millions of people are set to use the system for council elections in England and Wales and London's mayoral contest.

 

Eshaq Khan was stripped of his seat in Slough and banned from holding office for five years after being found guilty of corrupt practices.

 

Mawrey said the government had failed to act after similar frauds and that the current system made "wholesale electoral fraud both easy and profitable".

 

Mawrey, in his judgment on the Slough case, concluded: "There is no reason to suppose that this is an isolated incident.

 

"Roll-stuffing [packing the electoral roll with fictitious voters] is childishly simple to commit and very difficult to detect. To ignore the probability that it is widespread, particularly in local elections, is a policy that even an ostrich would despise."

 

The Electoral Commission urged the government to follow Northern Ireland and introduce individual registration for all voters.

 

A spokesman for the Commission said: "We have been saying since 2003 that the current system of voter registration in Great Britain is not sufficiently secure and that a system of individual voter registration is needed to provide a secure foundation for both registration and postal voting."