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Postal vote open to fraud, says judge
By Nick Britten, The Telegraph

The postal voting system is open to widespread corruption because the authorities are powerless to tackle fraud, a judge said yesterday.

Richard Mawrey, the deputy High Court judge overseeing a hearing into alleged election fraud by six Labour councillors, said that the function of returning officers in such elections was "nil" because they had no authority or resources to investigate suspected wrongdoing.

The police, he said, were inexperienced and were thus forced to be reactive rather than proactive.

The councillors are accused of vote rigging in two Birmingham city council wards, Aston and Bordersley Green, in last June's local elections.

They are said to have illegally tampered with 2,500 ballots to ensure that Labour councillors were returned in both wards.

The election court hearing in Birmingham was told that police who raided a warehouse on the eve of the June 10 election found the three Aston councillors, Mohammed Kazi, Mohammed Islam and Muhammed Afzal, surrounded by ballot papers.

The warehouse, it is alleged, was a "vote-forging factory" where Labour supporters altered papers in favour of their candidates. Police confiscated the papers, but handed them in to the council and they were included in the final count. No action was taken against anyone in the warehouse.

Lin Homer, the returning officer and chief executive of Birmingham council, told the inquiry: "I agreed to accept the votes as they didn't seem to have been tampered with."

Mr Mawrey told her: "It's quite clear from all the evidence that the function of the returning officer is nil. If something seems wrong with the postal ballot papers you have no powers or resources to ferret around to see if the votes are legitimate. You also have no way of verifying the signatures of the witnesses who sign the ballot papers.

"Police have to be reactive rather than proactive in postal votes and they have very little experience in these matters. It is far easier to police ballot box elections where the issue is personation."

The court heard that the department dealing with requests for postal vote applications had been overwhelmed after receiving 70,000 requests. So many ballot papers were received that they had to be stored in plastic bags because there were not enough sealed ballot boxes.

Election officials were under pressure because the council was holding its first "full" election in 20 years because of boundary changes.

John Owen, the election officer, described by Mrs Homer as the "expert" in election matters, had taken the plastic bag containing 275 votes from the police. He said: "The police constable asked me to accept votes and they were unsealed to my knowledge. I had to consider whether there was any reason why I could reject them and I could not."

Mr Mawrey said allegations of witness intimidation were "unsubstantiated" after a key witness failed to turn up on Monday.

The Labour councillors deny any wrongdoing. The case continues.