East Midlands Guardian 1.6.09
The Whiff of Corruption
by Edward Spalton (18 May 2009)
It is not just parliament. The democratic process itself is now tainted with corruption which did not exist before. This is largely the result of Labour's extension of universal postal voting on request. Sir Christopher Kelly, chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life said as much.
Citizens of other EU countries have a right to vote in EU elections. The large number of EU immigrants here could unduly influence the poll results in a low turnout of native voters. That is within the rules.
Among immigrant communities where the authority of male heads of household and of community leaders is strong, postal voting is an open invitation to ballot rigging, bullying and undue influence. In 2005 the Electoral Commissioner Richard Mawrey QC ruled that Birmingham had a system that was “wide open to fraud”.
He upheld the claim by Liberal Democrats that Labour activists were using the postal vote to rig an election. He said “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”.
This system is reckoned to favour Labour . Conservatives have been caught at the same game but the names of those accused and convicted so far suggest that this is a largely Muslim practice. There is also considerable anecdotal evidence that illegal immigrants can easily get themselves registered to vote. The sheer pressure of demand for postal votes means that Returning Officers are unable to conduct effective checks.
Labour has set up a special company in Londonderry, called Opt2Vote Ltd which “specialises in designing and delivering a range of solutions to address the changing needs of the UK electoral services market”.
Postal votes handled though this company are beyond the control of returning officers whose local knowledge might ring bells if ten people were suddenly registered at a small terraced house. The company claims to have dealt with 10 million votes in the last three years. So a considerable part of the electoral process has already been outsourced and privatised.
Under the old system there were occasional cases of undue influence being brought to bear on postal votes from old people's homes. Now the same thing can happen over whole neighbourhoods.
The present gerrymandered system will be replaced but this will not happen before 2014. The last possible date for the next general election is June 2010. So Labour will still have the advantage from the corruption created by its scheme. Countries rot from the head down and the rot has already gone very far . MPs were too busy fiddling their expenses to bother about it.
