Electoral quango focuses on PC agenda while poll fraudsters get devious

At last – the police have confirmed that they are investigating electoral fraud in Tower Hamlets, after the London Evening Standard reported today, “Worried councillors have seen evidence that votes belonging to a prisoner in jail and a dead person were hijacked,” in a recent by-election.

The cynic in me says that this is because the so-called Electoral Commission has been attacked by a minister for “for doing too little to tackle voting fraud ahead of this week’s mayoral and assembly battles,” as the Standard puts it.

And no wonder, the Commission’s annual review declared that they were “not aware” of any fraud, at least any fraud that had affected a poll result.  Oh well, that’s alright then!

No wonder local government minister, Grant Shapps is furious.

Concerned Tower Hamlets councillors fear that the electoral fraudsters invented false identities and intimidated local people into handing over their postal ballot papers.

The allegations centre on the local Bangladeshi community, where the proportion of women registered to vote – traditionally very low for cultural reasons – has suddenly grown.  Total numbers of male and female voters registered leapt by 7,023 in a single month in 2010.

In a letter to the commission, the independent watchdog against corruption in political life, Shapps warns “We cannot afford to be complacent.”

He is calling for a major audit of votes cast in a recent by-election in Tower Hamlets to identify bogus voters, blamed for causing a surprise Labour defeat.

“Given this background I see the need for the Electoral Commission to be more pro-active in investigating the situation,” said Mr Shapps, in a letter to commission chair Jenny Watson, pictured above.

The Standard reports, “Concerns came to a head this month when Labour lost a formerly safe council seat in Spitalfields and Banglatown. Gulam Robbani, an independent candidate backed by Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman, won by just 43 votes.”

Amazingly preventing electoral fraud isn’t seen as an explicit duty for the Electoral Commission and Jenny Watson, a “long term campaigner for women's rights”.

In their 2012-2016 corporate plan they state that they have an objective to achieve “well-run elections, referendums and electoral registration,” and one of the ways they’ll know they’ve achieved that objective is, “if at least 75% of people say electoral fraud is not a problem.”  Well, that’s hardly creditable, is it?  Fancy being assessed purely on what people think!

Perhaps we shouldn’t worry, though as the commission’s annual report says, comfortingly, “few substantiated cases of electoral malpractice or fraud were reported” in the 2010 general election period.

This rather flies in the face of the facts.  There was widespread concern of fraud in the 2010 general election, focussing on abuse of the postal voting system.  Nationwide, police launched 50 criminal inquiries into cases of electoral rolls being packed with ‘bogus’ voters.

The Metropolitan Police looked at 28 claims of major abuses across 12 boroughs - with four separate investigations in Tower Hamlets, East London.

Officials in Tower Hamlets received 5,166 new registrations just before the April 20 deadline, and there was been no time to check them all.

In Bethnal Green, it is feared the electoral register has been deliberately stacked with fictitious names.  More information, here - Daily Mail

Time, I think, for a share up of this cosy quango and time to rattle the cage of their £100k pls a year

Full report in the London Evening Standard, 30 April 2012

Electoral Commission statement

Electoral Commission letter to Grant Shapps.

* A clue to the Commission’s priorities is here – in its equality and diversity policy.  It seems that equality, diversity – and political correctness in its own organisation – is right up there, at the top of the agenda.  Meanwhile, back at the count ….