ELECTIVE SURGERY
BURIED in the small print of the Political Parties and Elections Bill is a
huge and unexpected concession from the Labour government. For years it has
been debasing the electoral process by making it as easy as possible for the
fraudulent to get postal votes. Now it seems to have had a Damascene
conversion.
As conventional wisdom runs that the larger the turnout the better Labour
does, the party has thrown away safeguards and debauched the ballot as it
tried to pull in as many voters as possible. In 2005, the electoral
commissioner Richard Mawrey QC ruled that Birmingham had a system that was
"wide open to fraud". Upholding claims from the Liberal Democrats that
Labour activists were using postal votes to rig an election, he declared
that "short of writing 'Steal Me' on the envelopes, it is hard to see what
more could be done to ensure their coming into the wrong hands."
Last year in Slough, a special election court convicted Tory councillor
Eshaq Khan of using bogus postal votes to beat Lydia Simmons, a former mayor
of Slough, by 119 votes to win the council's central ward. Sir Christopher
Kelly, chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, said the
Slough fraud highlighted the need for fundamental changes.
"Electoral fraud is not a trivial matter - it is an affront to the
democratic principle of one person one vote," he said. "Left unchecked, it
will eventually undermine trust and confidence in the democratic process and
by implication the electorate's consent to the outcome of elections."
The government seemed to have no interest in changing a system that suited
its interests. Until March, that is, when without warning it agreed to the
demands of Sir Christopher, the Electoral Commission and every other
independent observer for reform. The present system is a joy for
gerrymanderers and bullying men who want to make sure their wives and
grown-up children vote the way they want.
In future, people will not be able to apply for a fistful of ballots on
behalf of others. Individuals will have to take personal responsibility for
registering and provide evidence that returning officers can check that they
are who they say they are.
There's only one snag. The new, clean system will not be in place until
2014, or maybe later. The last possible date of the next general election is
3 June 2010. Like St Augustine, Labour wants to be pure ~ but not yet!
Meanwhile, back in the real world, polling experts are looking with horror
at the explosion of under-regulated postal voting that Gordon Brown will
allow as he tries to hold on to power. What was once a small part of the
electoral process is now a big business. Labour has created a company based
in Londonderry, the illiterately titled Opt2Vote Ltd, which boasts that it
"specialises in designing and delivering a range of solutions to address the
changing needs of the UK electoral services market". In three years it has
dealt with a staggering 10m postal votes.
Mike Smithson. the polling guru who runs the website politicalcbetting.com,
told the Eye that the fact that votes were now a money-making opportunity
showed that Labour had created a system beyond the control of returning
officers. There were too many postal votes for them to cope with.
"Returning officers and their staff have local knowledge," he said. "If 10
people register at a terraced house they know can only sleep three, they
will be suspicious. How can a company based in Londonderry spot potential
frauds?"
To which the answer is that Labour does not want the ballot processors in
Northern Ireland to spot potential frauds, not at least until the next
election is safely out of the way.
'Ratbiter'
