| Submit your comments on this article |
| Britain |
| Legal challenge to postal voting system lodged (UK election) |
| 2005-04-20 |
| The Government is facing a legal challenge in the High Court on Thursday over the risk of postal vote fraud in the general election. John Hemming, a Liberal Democrat candidate in Birmingham, is trying to force the Government to make last-minute changes to the new postal voting system. Mr Hemming has lodged an application against the new system on human rights grounds. He claims, first, that the Government has failed to provide for free and fair elections, and, second, that there is discrimination between different parts of the UK because the new system is not in use in Northern Ireland. A deputy leader of Birmingham City Council, Mr Hemming was the prime mover in having an election court set up in Birmingham to investigate reports of mass electoral fraud with postal ballots. The court ruled that six councillors should be removed from office, after hearing how police raided a postal votes "factory", to find a group of party activists altering piles of postal vote forms. Under the current system, returning officers must accept postal ballot papers even if they are covered in crossings out. Fears have been voiced that similar abuses are occurring in the current election, with voters pressured by activists to apply for a postal vote and then to hand the ballot paper over to party workers rather than send it direct to the returning officer. "My views on the way the Government has left the postal voting system in disarray are unprintable," Mr Hemming told Times Online. "It has done a lot of damage to Britain's constitutional procedures. I find it very sad that we are going into the 21st century reverting to 18th century political methods." On April 4 Richard Mawrey QC, the High Court judge who presided at the Birmingham election court, said that when the new system was trialled last year, it threw up electoral fraud "that would disgrace a banana republic". The judge went on: "To assert [as the Government did in a statement] that 'the systems already in place to deal with the allegations of electoral fraud are clearly working' indicates a state not simply of complacency but of denial... The fact is that there are no systems to deal realistically with fraud, and there never have been. Until there are, fraud will continue unabated." Mr Hemming makes four demands. He wants the postal voting system changed by an Order in Council, so that: postal votes are counted separately from non-postal votes, to make evidence of fraud more obvious parties are allowed to inspect the application forms for postal voting, to spot any evidence of fraud a list is kept of all the people who turn up at polling stations unaware that a postal vote has been applied for in their name They sound sensible precautions to me given the extent of fraud that has been uncovered. the period in which election petitions can be filed, querying an election result, is extended from 21 days to two months. Due to the urgency of the issue with the election looming, Mr Hemming's application for permission for a judicial review and the judicial review itself will both be heard on Thursday. A second application for judicial review will be lodged this week by George Galloway's Respect political party and the Birmingham-based People's Justice Party (PJP). Fatema Patwa, the solicitor acting for Respect and the PJP, said that the second application was being made on the same legal grounds under the Human Rights Act. However her clients were instead calling for the rules on postal voting to revert to the way they were before the reforms of 2001, so that only the elderly and infirm and those living away from home would be eligible for a postal vote. "Electoral fraud is an issue that needs to be aired," said Ms Patwa. "Since Parliament is dissolved, the courts are the only forum in which it can be aired." Dominic Kennedy, The Times investigations editor, said that Mr Hemming had scored a considerable success in the Birmingham election court. He said: "He is now trying to apply the lessons of that judgment to the general election. People will be worried that he will outwit the system. "What is exciting about all these cases is that judges will have the chance to consider evidence on whether the election can be fairly held and whether the results can be trusted." Mr Kennedy however dismissed as "an absurdity" the idea that a High Court judge would delay the election while the issue was sorted out. Interesting dynamic in that Muslims have voted overwhelmingly Labour in the past but are now really pissed at Blair over Iraq and anti-terrorism. Not sure if the opinion polls are measuring this. |
| Posted by:phil_b |