May 2008 elections ‘clean of fraud’
By politics.co.uk staff
Last year’s elections were “free from major incidents”, a voting watchdog has concluded.
Out of the 16 millions votes cast in local, London mayoral and London assembly elections in May 2008, just 103 cases of electoral malpractice were recorded by the police.
There were no cases of electoral malpractice on the scale of the 2004 and 2005 elections in Birmingham, Peterborough or Bradford and no election outcome was challenged on these grounds.
The findings were published in a report by the Electoral Commission, which set out to catalogue allegations of fraud to counter previous years’ lack of comparable data.
Last year for the first time, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), Police National Information and Coordination Centre (PNICC) recorded information about allegations of fraud.
“It’s important that when people cast their vote, they can have confidence that the electoral system is secure. The data in our report should go a long way to reassuring voters that the most recent elections were free from major incidents of electoral fraud,” said Jenny Watson, chair of the Electoral Commission.
The record show 472 allegations of alleged electoral malpractice were made which led to 103 cases. One case among them resulted in a conviction and nine resulted in a caution.
While 82 cases did not lead to further action, thirteen cases are still been investigated or awaiting decision by the CPS.
Measures were also taken to prevent registration and voting fraud, Ms Watson said. These included security checks for postal votes and more powers for electoral registration officers to review suspicious registrations.
“High profile cases like those in Birmingham, Peterborough and Slough influence our perception of the levels of fraud but things have changed since then. The police have devoted time and resources to investigating this type of crime and prison sentences for electoral fraud send a message about its seriousness.”
She admitted that there were still vulnerabilities in the ‘outdated’ system based on the registration of the ‘head of the household’ rather than on individuals.
The findings also suggest a move from the most common type of malpractice. False proxy voting was predominant before 2004 while postal voting malpractices peaked around 2004/05.
Now more allegations have been made on fraud which happened earlier in the voting process. Cases recorded showed an emphasis on fraudulent registration to vote and fraudulent applications to vote by post or proxy.
