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Scrap postal votes or elections will be fixed, says judge who warns ballot-rigging is now a 'probability' in parts of Britain
- Judge Richard Marvey, who presides over electoral fraud, made warning
- He said introducing 'on demand' postal voting did not boost turnout
- But it has opened the electoral system to fraud on 'an industrial scale'
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Open to abuse: Local election postal ballots are counted
Postal voting is ‘wide open to fraud’ and should be scrapped in its current form, a top judge warned last night.
Judge Richard Mawrey, who sits in judgment on election fraud cases, said ballot-rigging was now a ‘probability’ in some parts of Britain due to the extension of postal voting.
Mr Mawrey, a deputy high court judge, said the introduction of ‘on demand’ postal voting had failed to boost turnout. But he warned it had made Britain’s electoral system vulnerable to fraud on ‘an industrial scale’.
He told Radio 4’s File on 4 programme that in one case last year he had come across 14 different ways in which postal votes can be manipulated.
‘Postal voting on demand, however many safeguards you build into it, is wide open to fraud,’ he said.
‘It’s open to fraud on a scale that will make election rigging a possibility and indeed in some areas a probability.’
Mr Mawrey presided over a notorious 2004 ballot-rigging case in Birmingham which uncovered evidence of abuse he said would ‘disgrace a banana republic’.
Yesterday he added: ‘What has worried me about this for some time is the ease with which is it possible to commit postal vote fraud and the scale on which it can be committed.
‘In the past when you had personal voting, that is to say voting at polling stations, there was fraud but, frankly, it was minuscule. Postal voting on demand has enabled fraud to be carried out on what, in one case, I described as an industrial scale.’
Source: MailOnline
- 29 April 2015 at 3:58pm
More than 70,000 ballot papers stolen by van thieves
A van containing tens of thousands of ballot papers has been stolen while en route to a constituency in the south of England ahead of next week's general election.
The van, carrying around 72,300 ballot slips, was on its way to Hastings when thieves struck as it travelled through London.
Measures have been taken to ensure the stolen papers cannot be used <cite>Credit: PA</cite>
A spokesman for Hastings Borough Council said the Electoral Commission had been informed, and said police did not believe the papers were deliberately targeted.
He told ITV News that different ballot papers would now be used so that the stolen slips cannot be used at the polls.
He said himself he'd decide after the summer 
