Birmingham postal voting 'is now safer'

By Sitala Peek
BBC News, Birmingham

Judge Mawrey compared Birmingham to a banana republic

How safe are postal votes in Birmingham- a city once described as "worse than a banana republic" on account of its postal ballot fraud?

High Court judge Richard Mawrey QC made the comparison after a vote-rigging case in 2004 in which the results of elections for six seats on the city council were ruled unsafe.

He said it was "massive, systematic and organised fraud" and added that the postal voting system was "wide open" to criminals.

The court heard how sack loads of postal votes were driven to a "vote-rigging factory" in an industrial estate in the Witton area of the city and then put into envelopes.

A box of postal ballots for the Bordesley Green ward also "mysteriously appeared" at a count and a handwriting expert revealed that correction fluid had been used to change the position of the 'X' on hundreds of the ballots in favour of the Labour Party.

In 2009, police began investigating postal fraud allegations in the by-election for the Sparkhill ward of the city in 2009 when the council identified 387 potentially suspicious ballots.

'Inherently unsafe'

No arrests were made and no charges were brought, however.

The Electoral Reform Society, which campaigns for proportional representation, has said postal voting en-masse is "inherently unsafe" in principle.

We've seen postal votes filled in by prospective candidates' teams using false names or deceased people's names. The Electoral Reform Society

But Birmingham City Council and the police said new security measures would make postal voting in the general election "safe and easy".

Robert Connelly, elections manager at Birmingham City Council, said "radical improvements" had been made to the security of the postal voting system for the elections on 6 May.

Residents were required to re-register after 2004, providing their date of birth and their signature on the register and their postal voting form.

Mr Connelly said the extra information on the ballot form provided a higher level of security when cross referenced with the register.

Any discrepancies between the information could be manually checked by a council officer and returning officer.

'Inherently unsafe'

He said: "We also work with the police to proactively investigate any suspicious patterns in postal vote registration, for example an unusually high volume of ballots from a single house or street, or high volume of registrations being submitted at once."

Candidate tweets about postal ballot results

Det Insp Mark Salt, of West Midlands Police, said Birmingham was now no worse than other cities for electoral fraud.

He added: "Over the last five years procedures around postal voting have changed significantly with many steps being taken to ensure authenticity of the voter.

"Postal voting is an easy and effective way of ensuring that your vote is recorded."

The Electoral Reform Society welcomed the security changes but said it was still concerned about the use of postal votes.

A spokesman for the society said: "We've seen cases of systematic fraud such as the harvesting of postal votes filled in by prospective candidates' teams using false names or deceased people's names.

"You also get landlords picking up voting reminders from empty rental properties and applying for postal votes in their previous tenants names."

Fresh problems

He said the integrity of voting had increased with the introduction of secret ballots in the late 19th Century, but postal voting could be seen as a step backwards, due to the potential for doorstep intimidation from canvassers "presenting people with bits of paper and instructing them who to vote for".

Postal voting was also open to accidental abuse from students who were registered on the electoral roll twice, once at their parent's family home and once in their rented university accommodation, the society said.

Technological developments such as the social networking site Twitter have created fresh problems.

Labour's new media "tsar" Kerry McCarthy was reported to the police in April for an alleged breach of electoral rules after tweeting about postal votes.

The independent Electoral Commission, which regulates UK elections, said fraud accounted for a small percentage of all votes cast.

It said in 2008 16 million people voted and 103 cases of electoral fraud were reported.

Between 2000 and 2006 there were 23 convictions for electoral registration fraud.