Tower Hamlets is reported to be among boroughs with highest incidents of vote fraud! Vote 'NO' to vote fraud! Vote 'NO' to elected mayor on Thursday

FROM the Guardian web site:


Postal votes being counted in 2006.



Police have received at least 50 complaints about serious voter fraud in advance of this week's elections amid warnings that the rapid rise of postal voting is making the system vulnerable to abuse.

Accusations range from political activists putting pressure on people to mark their party's box on the postal vote form, to phantom voters being registered by candidates and their supporters to farm votes. The problems have emerged before most postal votes have been returned.

Most of the alleged abuses relate to the council elections in England, which coincide with the general election.

In London the Metropolitan police have received 28 complaints across 12 boroughs and launched five investigations – one in Ealing and four in Tower Hamlets, which has a history of problems with electoral fraud. In Tower Hamlets the allegations are understood to relate to the registration of up to 10 "ghost voters" at single addresses where the residents have no knowledge of the names on the electoral roll. George Galloway's Respect party has complained that opponents are interfering with postal voters.

West Yorkshire police have received 19 complaints and launched five investigations across Bradford and Calderdale, where two arrests have been made.

Detective Chief Inspector Steve Taylor, head of the economic unit for West Yorkshire police, responsible for investigating breaches of electoral law, said: "We expect we will get more concerns when the counting starts because that's when the signatures are checked. Local elections are much more susceptible to abuse because of the small number of votes required to affect the outcome. There's a lot of power to be had locally and it can go under the wire more than in a general election."

John Turner, chief executive of the Association of Electoral Administrators, said the system was vulnerable because people did not have to provide identification when they registered for postal votes. "If someone is intent on fraudulent activity they can do that either by making up a name or using erroneous addresses. It's not a properly verified system and it should be," said Turner.

He added that the rise in postal votes was also causing problems in the administration of the system. "When everything is very pressurised with less than 11 days between the close of nominations and polling day … it is a struggle to get everything out very quickly," he said.

Police forces in Bristol, Cleveland, Derbyshire and the Black Country are also conducting inquiries relating to breaches of election law.

Last week it emerged that Bristol police were investigating allegations that Kerry McCarthy, Gordon Brown's "social networking tsar" and Labour candidate for Bristol East, published the results of a sample of postal votes seen by supporters on Twitter. It is illegal to publicise the results of votes before 10pm on election night.

A separate survey by the Guardian on voter registration in the most marginal seats, conducted after registration closed nearly two weeks ago, revealed a surge in postal voting. The volume of postal vote requests showed an increase on 2005 of 40% in Brighton, 62% in Barnet and 61% in Edinburgh South, putting electoral administration systems under pressure.

Candidates in three separate areas told the Guardian that postal votes were central to their campaign. One said that they had spent the last day before registration closed signing up people in care homes for postal ballots where they thought it would earn their party extra votes.

At the weekend David Monks, head of elections for the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives, called for a ban on political parties handling postal votes amid fears that activists are collecting ballot papers before forwarding them on in order to record the results in their canvassing process. This breaches a national code of conduct, but is not illegal.

Jens Eschenbaecher, a spokesman for the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, said it had deployed a team to report on the elections at the invitation of the government. "This is a routine activity. We have received this invitation and have sent a small team of election experts as we did in the last election."

The Electoral Commission said: "Levels of fraud are relatively low. We have called on the government to introduce individual electoral registration and we're working on how we can do that in the future. That would require some sort of ID. We have also called on the government to look at the timescales because of the deadline for delivery of nominations and polling day."