'Vote early, vote often!........'

One certainty in this most uncertain of General Elections is that there will be vote rigging on a large scale, especially in constituencies where there is a concentration of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. Tower Hamlets must be the most corrupt of all in a very competitive field that includes Blackburn and Oldham.

 

This is yet another part of British life that was corrupted by the Blair regime.

 

Before 2004, the British electoral system was the envy of the world. The procedures were such that it was impossible to cheat the system. The Returning Officer had total personal responsibility for the conduct of the poll. He was answerable to no-one except the Home Office. If he got it wrong the consequences could be dire; it was clear where the  buck stopped.

 

Postal and proxy voting was strictly limited, mainly to the bed-ridden, voters who were absent on duty from the constituency on Polling Day, and a few others.

 

Very few were issued; maybe a hundred or so in the average constituency. When the postal ballots were opened on polling day they would be verified but not counted until mixed with the papers at the main count. They would be carefully scrutinised by the candidates’ polling agents. Even if a few dodgy ones escaped the net they would be too few to have any impact on the result.

 

Blair opened the floodgates. To encourage a higher turn-out voters could get postal ballot papers almost on demand. There are now more than 7 million postal voters. All the fraudsters need to do is to collect the papers from the voters and mark them at their leisure. Cynics might say that Labour was not bothered by this since almost all the rigged votes would go to them.

 

The outcome was foreseeable and immediate. There was a major scandal in Birmingham in 2004. The first election court since the 19^th Century investigated. The judge said that the poll ‘would have disgraced a banana republic’. Birmingham Chief Executive Lynn Homer was Returning Officer. She had to resign (she popped up shortly afterwards as head of immigration, then as CEO of the Borders Agency. She is now boss of HMRC).

 

In 2010, the police had no less than 50 vote rigging investigations going on simultaneously.

 

It will be no different this time around. Nothing has been done to put matters right in the last five years.

 

Does anybody care or is there a  general belief that the whole political system is rotten?