I have been concerned about voting fraud for some time now, but my concerns were limited to votes being stolen or people having their votes "checked" when using postal votes.
There is however another danger which is the danger of ghost voters highlighted in the Sunday Times today. Studies indicate that there may be between 1 and 3.5 million people on the electoral role who either have no right to vote or may indeed not exist at all.
In 1997 I think we all had a fair degree of confidence in our electoral system, now that is collapsing. It may well be the case that people who should not be on the electoral role are there through their own error or ignorance of the rules, but rather obviously people who don't exist did not get there by mere inadvertent mistake. Councils can be won or lost by one or two votes in key wards. There is a real danger of elections being stolen.
How is it that we have come to the stage when we have Polish election observers and some compare our elections to a banana republic?
The system needs reform, but not just to get turnout up, but to stamp on fraud. If we want to get turn out up, then we can change the voting day.
For more on voting fraud see here.
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I have long doubted the result of the last general election. It is very difficult to find anyone who admits to voting Labour. In the mad world that Labour has driven us into it is entirely possible that the fixed the result. They have plenty of previous on the charge of fiddling figures.
Anonymous, I am not sure I doubt the last election result but I don't know that many people who voted Labour either. Then again where I live, I wouldn't!
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