Alleged Electoral Fraud in Tower Hamlets

[sierra_le_oli]

Allegations of postal voting fraud are being investigated in, among other places, my borough of Tower Hamlets.

The council said it had received 3,123 registrations in the days before the 20 April deadline, which it did not have time to check before the register closed.

Words fail.

It has searched properties where more than eight people were

Comments

[feetnotes]

the main check is that the signature upon the form confirming you are the person registered to cast the postal vote in question must match the signature given when the facility of casting a postal vote was chosen; you must already have been on the electoral register, or about to be entered upon it, to have the option.

there have in some previous uk elections been proven cases of party workers offering to fill in postal votes for people - especially the elderly, and voters with a poor or non-existent ability to read english - taking away the signed forms together with un-crossed ballot papers, and entering the crosses for their party's candidates later; this may not have resulted in votes being cast as the registered electors would not have intended, but is certainly illegal.

there have also been attested cases of the ballots overtly cast by "dependant women" actually having been dictated or filled in by the male head of the family - and not only in relatively recent immigrant families, neither; it has occurred in families here since - and before - the conquest, and in middle-class as well as working-class families, and through the sixties, seventies & eighties, that i know of. and probably since; and this, too, is illegal.

i don't know whether there are now school lessons specifically upon the subject of your right to cast your own vote, as you see fit, as soon as you are of age; we had none in the sixties & seventies, but did learn at least a little about english, welsh, scottish & irish history, the struggle for the universal franchise (including, for votes for women - though we weren't told of the suffragists, as opposed to the suffragettes), that has resulted in the current right to vote of every british citizen of age excepting only the royals, the peerage (~= members of the house of lords), and those certified insane.

whether the franchise should be extended to seventeen year-olds, or to sixteen year-olds, is not currently/yet a matter of general agreement.

[sierra_le_oli]

Thanks for the background. The claim is that the alleged voter fraud is caused by Bangladeshi immigrants, though even if that is proven, it fails to explain what happens in all those other boroughs under investigation which don't have similar demographics.

The argument for extending the franchise to 16 & 17 year olds currently seems to revolve around raising turnout, and I need more than that to be convinced it's a good idea. Probably a discussion worth having though.