AADHIKAR evidential citation: Andrew Gilligan making inaccurate and confusing references to the directly elected mayor bid in Tower Hamlets

The following is taken from the DAILY TELEGRAPH web site:


By permitting fraud we betray democracy
The increase in postal-vote fraud is an urgent and dangerous issue, argues Andrew Gilligan.

By Andrew Gilligan
Published: 10:00PM BST 06 May 2010
Comments 11 | Comment on this article

A voter places a ballot paper in the ballot box at the polling station at Market Hall in Swadlincote, Derbyshire Photo: PA
At the European elections, less than a year ago, the electoral roll of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets contained 148,970 names. By January this year, it had shot up to 160,278. And in the past month alone, a further 5,000 new names have mysteriously appeared on the voting lists.
There are only two possibilities here. Either Tower Hamlets is growing twice as fast as the fastest-growing city in China, or it is the target of massive and systematic electoral fraud. We can have a guess at the answer from the fact that some three-bedroom flats in the borough appear to have 12 adults on the roll. The real occupants, when approached on the doorstep, have never heard of their 10 new flatmates.

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Elections in Tower Hamlets have always been a scandal. In 2006, an entire tower block had its postal votes stolen. But this time it's more serious. In a close election, Tower Hamlets – and other places like it – could help tip the balance of power. And there are now rather too many other places like it, with dozens of police inquiries under way in inner-city seats across the country. At the time of writing, I don't know how Britain has voted. But under some scenarios, the real and frightening possibility is that this election was decided by fraud.
There are local factors, too. As the Telegraph has documented, the Islamic Forum of Europe, a radical Islamist group based at the hardline East London Mosque, has been accused of secretly infiltrating the Tower Hamlets Labour Party – and is seeking to consolidate its control by having the borough run by a directly elected mayor. A referendum on the mayoral proposal was also held yesterday.
I have no evidence that the IFE is behind the fraud in Tower Hamlets. But its favoured candidates have done remarkably well lately. At the last London mayoral election, Ken Livingstone, for whom leading members of the IFE vigorously campaigned, saw his share of the vote in one ward rise from 29.6 per cent to a rather improbable 68.1 per cent.
The problem is simple. Panicked by falling turnout, Labour allowed postal voting on demand. But a postal vote is a thousand times easier to rig than a vote cast in person. At a polling station, you need a different body for each fake voter. With a postal vote, all you need is a different envelope, and perhaps not even that.
Non-existent electors are only the half of it. By all but abolishing the secrecy of the ballot, postal voting opens the door to threats, pressure and outright vote-buying. If you vote in a polling station, nobody can make you show them your ballot paper. Nobody can know if you've obeyed orders or not.
Worst of all, though, is that the authorities don't seem to care. Police inquiries seldom get anywhere. After the 2006 scandals, one minister said that allegations of electoral fraud risked "undermining confidence". In the most dishonest press release I have ever seen, the Islamist-influenced Tower Hamlets council claimed that an election tribunal had found "no evidence of electoral fraud in Tower Hamlets". Actually, the judge ruled that there was "clear, prima facie evidence" for it.
Our rulers have tiptoed round this subject because voting fraud is mostly a problem – for now – in Asian areas. But what they're actually saying, if you think about it, is that it's all right for Asians to have their votes stolen – not a view that most Asian voters would share.
To avoid "undermining confidence" in democracy itself, we need change. For future elections, postal voting on demand should be suspended in Tower Hamlets, in Birmingham, in the Northern mill towns and anywhere else where problems arise. Nobody in these places is more than a short walk from a polling station. If we do not act, we are effectively in league with the
vote-stealers.
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COMMENTS: 11
POSTAL VOTING should be stopped with the exception of overseas citizens who are entitled to vote and those who are too ill or infirm to get to the polling stations in person.
As a young woman I can remember that ALL the parties made great efforts to make sure that those who could not get to the polling station were collected in cars etc. to cast their vote.
This fact alone became a source of humour for the media but there was a very serious side to this practice and it should be revived in today's political polling booths.
madamd
on May 07, 2010
at 07:28 AM
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Is there one group who seem to be mostly responsible for this fraud? Methodists, Mormons, The Amish perhaps? Or possibly, the one group we're not allowed to talk about for fear of getting our heads chopped off or a visit from plod.
Willy
on May 07, 2010
at 03:35 AM
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Tim Barton

"Alternatively we could just go back to the old system whereby postal voting was the preserve of the Forces and (if I remember correctly) embassy staff."

Quite, it wasn't broken until Labour fixed it.
Simple Sailor
on May 07, 2010
at 02:35 AM
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Major postal fraud is new to Britain under New Labour. New Labour, Old Stalinists, not orignal Labour.
cyndi
on May 07, 2010
at 01:30 AM
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the rancid stench hanging over this election just gets worse and worse.

postal vote fraud, bare-faced dishonesty and ineffectual, inconclusive beaurocracy as a response; voters locked out of polling booths, polling booths running out of papers; Our whole system seems to be in complete disarray.

There would furthermore seem to be a quite realistic prospect of both sides claiming to have some version of a "win on points"

if Gordon Brown and Labour have the utter, brazen effrontery to attempt to cling to office, our system will be completely discredited and the subsequent, inevitable election within a year, a farce
ben arnulfssen
on May 07, 2010
at 12:59 AM
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Voting in the UK. What a shambles!! Pencils on string, no checking id.
Perhaps voting should be compulsory, with a box on the ballot paper to opt out should you wish, and ballot papers should only be issued on presentation of two forms of identification.
Polly
on May 07, 2010
at 12:54 AM
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No serious change will be made to the widespread fraud of postal voting whilst parties, especially the Labour party, look at it as a convenient way to gerrymander seats. By dealing with a few "community leaders" and promising them what they want the few hundred votes required in a marginal can be obtained. This has been especially prevelant in local body elections in the North West. Since this form of politics doesn't tend to favour the conservatives, should they win tonight, they should return the rules to proving that you will be out of your constituancy on the day of voting. The registration of thousands of new voters just goes to show that the home office has lost all control of it's ability to confirm who exists in the country, in the first 100 days the conservatives should look to emplace a general audit of the population with resulting clarification of who is who. If the Normans were able to do this in 1066, it shouldn't be beyond the Civil service of 2010. This will allow a clearer picture of what has happened since 1997 and what, if anything, needs to be done to prevent the home office losing control of its ability control the registration and verify the bono fides of the general public again. Jack Straws first act as Home Secretary in 1997 was to remove the primary purpose provision for British residency through mariage. If Jack Straw saw lessening the controls as a good thing for Labour it follows that it is a point of urgency for an incomming Conservative administration to review this.
stu
on May 06, 2010
at 11:02 PM
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For an overseas postal vote why not demand a Passport number?
This is all very disturbing but if you let so many people have naturalisation for so little input; what do you expect?
Labour is corrupt at both a local and national level.
Merchantman
on May 06, 2010
at 10:42 PM
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Having never had a postal vote I am unsure how it works. I would expect the ballot paper to be sent to my address where I could fill it in and send it back.

If it was for someone I didn't know I would return it with questions asked or destroy it.

If it never arrived then I would conclude that it had been intercepted by someone at the Royal Mail and expect the police to investigate there.

Or does the council deliver the ballot papers?
ian
on May 06, 2010
at 10:28 PM
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Alternatively we could just go back to the old system whereby postal voting was the preserve of the Forces and (if I remember correctly) embassy staff.
Tim Barton
on May 06, 2010
at 10:24 PM
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Are you opening a book on how many of these fraud investigations are into Labour party affiliates?
Bionic Raspberry
on May 06, 2010
at 10:24 PM
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