D_Raay
04-11-2005, 02:44 PM
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/apr2005/labo-a11.shtml
On April 4, Richard Mawrey QC, acting as an election commissioner, issued a judgement in a civil hearing quashing the result of two local authority elections in Birmingham held June 10 last year.
Mawrey’s 192-page judgement stated that the polls in the Aston and Bordesley Green electoral wards were corrupted by “massive, systematic and organised” vote-rigging by Labour members, with the aim of offsetting a collapse in the party’s vote due to the Iraq war.
The case was the first of its kind to be held in Britain for more than a century. It arose after Election Petitions were brought under the Representation of the People Act 1983 and 2000, challenging the result of two elections in the June 2004 poll.
Mawrey’s decision was announced just one day before Prime Minister Tony Blair called a general election for May 5. On February 22, the QC had accused Labour of attempting to delay the vote-rigging hearings until after the general election by withdrawing their legal support from the accused party candidates.
http://news.scotsman.com/politics.cfm?id=382402005
IN Birmingham a judge has decided that six Labour councillors were part of a conspiracy to defraud the city council elections in June last year.
The court heard tales of a vote-rigging factory where stolen postal ballots were opened up, changed and then resealed before being given to the returning officer.
The judge ruled that two of the accused councillors had told a tissue of lies both to the police and on the witness stand. He said that the scale of the fraud was such that it could not have been undertaken without others within the Birmingham Labour Party being aware of it and doing nothing to prevent it.
So was this an isolated case, out of step with the rest of the UK? Is it something which is endemic within the Labour Party?
It would certainly be easier if there was a single group which could shoulder the blame. Regrettably, we do not believe vote fraud can be isolated to any particular city, party or community and we believe it could happen in any constituency in the country because of the wholly inadequate state of the law at the moment.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1562417,00.html
The postal voting system makes Britain look like a banana republic, says a judge. Yet Labour favours it and has ignored warnings of fraud. Robert Winnett and Abul Taher investigate a growing scandal
Welcome to the banana republic of Blackburn, the northern town where, according to one parliamentary candidate, citizens’ votes are no longer their own.
This week Craig Murray, a former diplomat hoping to become the local MP, will be writing to the Electoral Commission to raise his fears of vote-rigging in the constituency. The soaring numbers of people voting by post, he said, are leaving the election wide open to fraud.
“I’ve been approached by several people in the Asian community who are under huge pressure from Labour activists to apply for a postal vote rather than a ballot vote and then hand their postal vote over to the Labour party,” he said.
“That is happening now in Blackburn on a wide scale. In my career as a diplomat I’ve been used to precisely this situation abroad but wasn’t expecting to face it in the UK.”
In Blackburn the contest is particularly tense. The sitting MP is Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, and the local Muslim community is threatening to vote him out in protest over the Iraq war.
In its efforts to hang on to every vote it can, Labour is urging people to register for postal votes; already 50% more people than in 2001 will be using the system in Blackburn this time. Many of them, claimed Murray, are facing pressure or even threats of “repercussions” intended to influence who they support.
The allegations in Blackburn are by no means isolated. The British electoral system, once the envy of the world, is under unprecedented fire. Last week, a special election judge said that Britain’s postal voting system would “disgrace a banana republic”, describing it as “farcical . . . hopelessly insecure . . . (it) contains no effective safeguards and is an invitation to fraud”.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/tm_objectid=15382982&method=full&siteid=50143&headline=vote-rigging-councillor-is-sent-to-jail-name_page.html
DISGRACED former Labour party councillor Muhammed Hussain was jailed yesterday for rigging postal votes in a local council election.
The 61-year-old was sentenced to three years and seven months after admitting conspiracy to defraud the result of the Bastwell ward of Blackburn three years ago.
Hussain, who beat the sitting Tory candidate by 685 votes, had blank ballot papers collected from homes in the Lancashire ward and filled out in his favour.
Police found 233 fraudulent votes cast for Hussain, which his supporters signed as witness.
Preston crown court judge Peter Openshaw called it a "public scandal" and said he was passing a stiff sentence to set an example to others.
Echoing comments made by another judge earlier this week he added the postal voting system was "wide open to fraud".
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/04/05/nvote105.xml
Labour activists had 'vote-rigging factory' to hijack postal votes
By Nick Britten
(Filed: 05/04/2005)
Beneath the veneer of an apparently democratic local election campaign the battle to control areas of Birmingham involved allegations of death threats, intimidation and bribery.
In scenes more reminiscent of a gangster movie, party members used nefarious tactics to ensure a clean sweep of the six available seats in Aston and Bordesley Green, delivering a large and surprising swing towards Labour.
Mohammed Islam, Muhammed Afzal and Mohammed Kazi
The accused Aston candidates: Mohammed Islam, Muhammed Afzal and Mohammed Kazi
At the height of the skulduggery was a "vote-rigging factory" set up by Labour activists in Aston and run from a disused warehouse. There, the three candidates - Mohammed Islam, Muhammed Afzal and Mohammed Kazi, who maintained their innocence and described yesterday's judgment as a "dark day for democracy" - and their supporters altered bags stuffed with ballots to ensure that they were elected.
A midnight raid by police on the eve of the election found them sitting at a table with 275 unsealed postal votes scattered on a table in front of them. The find proved to be the tip of the iceberg.
They had collected the ballots in a variety of ways. The most common was to get hold of a copy of the electoral register, apply for a postal ballot in someone else's name and have it sent to a "safe" address where it could be picked up.
This could then be submitted with a forged signature and false witness confirmation, and the ballot could be accepted. Another method was to get activists to go door to door collecting papers, signed or unsigned, which could then be doctored.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1555518,00.html
SIX middle-aged Muslim men, all pillars of their communities, won seats on Britain’s biggest local authority in the most corrupt election campaign since the Victorian era.
Vote-riggers exploited weaknesses in the postal voting system to steal thousands of ballot papers and mark them for Labour, helping the party to take first place in elections to Birmingham City Council.
They believed that their cheating would be hidden for ever in the secrecy of the strong boxes where counted votes are stored, never suspecting that a judge would take the rare step of smashing the seals and tracing the ballots back to the voters. Election corruption has been so rare in the past 100 years that lawyers have struggled to find examples since the late 19th century, when Britain was adjusting to the novelty of universal male suffrage.
The elections last June were the dirtiest since the general election of 1895, when Sir Tankerville Chamberlayne, the Conservative candidate for Southampton, notoriously travelled by cart from pub to pub, waving and throwing sovereigns at the crowds. His election was later ruled invalid.
The Birmingham vote- riggers were more cunning than the flamboyant Sir Tankerville. They coldly exploited communities where many cannot speak English or write their names. They forced what the judge called “dishonest or frightened” postmen into handing over sacks of postal ballots. They seem to have infiltrated the mail service: several voters gave evidence that their ballot papers were altered to support Labour after they put them in the post.
------
On April 4, Richard Mawrey QC, acting as an election commissioner, issued a judgement in a civil hearing quashing the result of two local authority elections in Birmingham held June 10 last year.
Mawrey’s 192-page judgement stated that the polls in the Aston and Bordesley Green electoral wards were corrupted by “massive, systematic and organised” vote-rigging by Labour members, with the aim of offsetting a collapse in the party’s vote due to the Iraq war.
The case was the first of its kind to be held in Britain for more than a century. It arose after Election Petitions were brought under the Representation of the People Act 1983 and 2000, challenging the result of two elections in the June 2004 poll.
Mawrey’s decision was announced just one day before Prime Minister Tony Blair called a general election for May 5. On February 22, the QC had accused Labour of attempting to delay the vote-rigging hearings until after the general election by withdrawing their legal support from the accused party candidates.
http://news.scotsman.com/politics.cfm?id=382402005
IN Birmingham a judge has decided that six Labour councillors were part of a conspiracy to defraud the city council elections in June last year.
The court heard tales of a vote-rigging factory where stolen postal ballots were opened up, changed and then resealed before being given to the returning officer.
The judge ruled that two of the accused councillors had told a tissue of lies both to the police and on the witness stand. He said that the scale of the fraud was such that it could not have been undertaken without others within the Birmingham Labour Party being aware of it and doing nothing to prevent it.
So was this an isolated case, out of step with the rest of the UK? Is it something which is endemic within the Labour Party?
It would certainly be easier if there was a single group which could shoulder the blame. Regrettably, we do not believe vote fraud can be isolated to any particular city, party or community and we believe it could happen in any constituency in the country because of the wholly inadequate state of the law at the moment.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1562417,00.html
The postal voting system makes Britain look like a banana republic, says a judge. Yet Labour favours it and has ignored warnings of fraud. Robert Winnett and Abul Taher investigate a growing scandal
Welcome to the banana republic of Blackburn, the northern town where, according to one parliamentary candidate, citizens’ votes are no longer their own.
This week Craig Murray, a former diplomat hoping to become the local MP, will be writing to the Electoral Commission to raise his fears of vote-rigging in the constituency. The soaring numbers of people voting by post, he said, are leaving the election wide open to fraud.
“I’ve been approached by several people in the Asian community who are under huge pressure from Labour activists to apply for a postal vote rather than a ballot vote and then hand their postal vote over to the Labour party,” he said.
“That is happening now in Blackburn on a wide scale. In my career as a diplomat I’ve been used to precisely this situation abroad but wasn’t expecting to face it in the UK.”
In Blackburn the contest is particularly tense. The sitting MP is Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, and the local Muslim community is threatening to vote him out in protest over the Iraq war.
In its efforts to hang on to every vote it can, Labour is urging people to register for postal votes; already 50% more people than in 2001 will be using the system in Blackburn this time. Many of them, claimed Murray, are facing pressure or even threats of “repercussions” intended to influence who they support.
The allegations in Blackburn are by no means isolated. The British electoral system, once the envy of the world, is under unprecedented fire. Last week, a special election judge said that Britain’s postal voting system would “disgrace a banana republic”, describing it as “farcical . . . hopelessly insecure . . . (it) contains no effective safeguards and is an invitation to fraud”.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/tm_objectid=15382982&method=full&siteid=50143&headline=vote-rigging-councillor-is-sent-to-jail-name_page.html
DISGRACED former Labour party councillor Muhammed Hussain was jailed yesterday for rigging postal votes in a local council election.
The 61-year-old was sentenced to three years and seven months after admitting conspiracy to defraud the result of the Bastwell ward of Blackburn three years ago.
Hussain, who beat the sitting Tory candidate by 685 votes, had blank ballot papers collected from homes in the Lancashire ward and filled out in his favour.
Police found 233 fraudulent votes cast for Hussain, which his supporters signed as witness.
Preston crown court judge Peter Openshaw called it a "public scandal" and said he was passing a stiff sentence to set an example to others.
Echoing comments made by another judge earlier this week he added the postal voting system was "wide open to fraud".
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/04/05/nvote105.xml
Labour activists had 'vote-rigging factory' to hijack postal votes
By Nick Britten
(Filed: 05/04/2005)
Beneath the veneer of an apparently democratic local election campaign the battle to control areas of Birmingham involved allegations of death threats, intimidation and bribery.
In scenes more reminiscent of a gangster movie, party members used nefarious tactics to ensure a clean sweep of the six available seats in Aston and Bordesley Green, delivering a large and surprising swing towards Labour.
Mohammed Islam, Muhammed Afzal and Mohammed Kazi
The accused Aston candidates: Mohammed Islam, Muhammed Afzal and Mohammed Kazi
At the height of the skulduggery was a "vote-rigging factory" set up by Labour activists in Aston and run from a disused warehouse. There, the three candidates - Mohammed Islam, Muhammed Afzal and Mohammed Kazi, who maintained their innocence and described yesterday's judgment as a "dark day for democracy" - and their supporters altered bags stuffed with ballots to ensure that they were elected.
A midnight raid by police on the eve of the election found them sitting at a table with 275 unsealed postal votes scattered on a table in front of them. The find proved to be the tip of the iceberg.
They had collected the ballots in a variety of ways. The most common was to get hold of a copy of the electoral register, apply for a postal ballot in someone else's name and have it sent to a "safe" address where it could be picked up.
This could then be submitted with a forged signature and false witness confirmation, and the ballot could be accepted. Another method was to get activists to go door to door collecting papers, signed or unsigned, which could then be doctored.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1555518,00.html
SIX middle-aged Muslim men, all pillars of their communities, won seats on Britain’s biggest local authority in the most corrupt election campaign since the Victorian era.
Vote-riggers exploited weaknesses in the postal voting system to steal thousands of ballot papers and mark them for Labour, helping the party to take first place in elections to Birmingham City Council.
They believed that their cheating would be hidden for ever in the secrecy of the strong boxes where counted votes are stored, never suspecting that a judge would take the rare step of smashing the seals and tracing the ballots back to the voters. Election corruption has been so rare in the past 100 years that lawyers have struggled to find examples since the late 19th century, when Britain was adjusting to the novelty of universal male suffrage.
The elections last June were the dirtiest since the general election of 1895, when Sir Tankerville Chamberlayne, the Conservative candidate for Southampton, notoriously travelled by cart from pub to pub, waving and throwing sovereigns at the crowds. His election was later ruled invalid.
The Birmingham vote- riggers were more cunning than the flamboyant Sir Tankerville. They coldly exploited communities where many cannot speak English or write their names. They forced what the judge called “dishonest or frightened” postmen into handing over sacks of postal ballots. They seem to have infiltrated the mail service: several voters gave evidence that their ballot papers were altered to support Labour after they put them in the post.
------