I had no idea!

Election fraud driven by immigrants practising "village politics" of the Indian sub-continent could be a crucial factor in deciding the future control of Birmingham City Council, a major report warns today.

Family loyalties, the dominance of men and the existence of the "biraderi" clan system among British Asians provides perfect conditions for widespread rigging of postal votes and other electoral malpractice in Britain’s major cities, according to the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust. In a 94-page report called Purity of Elections in the UK – Causes for Concern, the trust argues that the UK’s election system is close to breaking point and at risk of fraud, as the countdown to May’s local elections gets under way.

The study says the turning point in recognising Britain has a problem with election fraud came in 2005 when a court found six Birmingham Labour Party members in Aston and Bordesley Green, all Asian men, guilty of tampering with thousands of postal ballots.

The incident, which Elections Commissioner Richard Mawrey QC said would "disgrace a banana republic", forced the Government to tighten regulations surrounding postal voting, but the reforms were nowhere near tough enough according to the authors of today’s report.

They say: "The Birmingham election court of 2005 demonstrates that the control of a major city council or the outcome of a parliamentary contest could be influenced by the scale of fraud that was rendered possible by postal voting."

The study says numerous convictions for electoral fraud since 2000, when postal votes first became freely available on demand, resulted from incidents in inner-city wards where a large concentration of voters originate from the Indian sub-continent.

It adds: "Significantly, these convictions have emerged alongside anecdotal evidence of more widespread, and long-run, practices associated with Pakistani, Kashmiri and Bangladeshi traditions of biraderi (brotherhood) clans influencing voting behaviour.

"It is widely suggested that extended family and kinship networks, frequently with their origins in settlement patterns in Pakistan and Bangladesh, are mobilised to secure the support of up to several hundred electors, effectively constituting a block vote."

So, are our fearless elected representatives from the three main parties taking action to challenge this pattern of behaviour? Are they distancing themselves from those engaging in such activities? Not a bit of it! On the contrary, we are told that "all of the main political parties have sought at times to gain advantage by allying themselves to a Muslim candidate claiming to be able to guarantee a minimum number of votes arising from their support within a wider clan". This is something that is also evident from the fact that, while the overwhelming majority of vote-rigging cases involve Pakistani or Bangladeshi Muslims, the party affiliations of those involved seem to be pretty evenly divided between Labour, the Tories, and the Lib Dems. More evidence that for all three parties the primary, or perhaps the sole aim, is to get power, while such things as democracy and public service come, at best, a poor second in the reckoning.

Still, it is nice to see the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, a strongly left-wing organisation, which last year donated £2million to the Lib Dems, coming out and acknowledging that certain sections of the community do indeed have a disproportionate tendency to engage in vote-rigging, and that the advent of postal voting on demand has played into the hands of anyone who should wish to subvert the democratic process in this manner. If we're lucky, this might herald a new era of straight talking about the former issue, and the solving of the latter problem by the simple expedient of abolishing the on demand postal vote. But since all three major parties have, for short-term gain, bought into the long-term corruption of the democratic process, I don't hold out much hope that this new era will eventuate.

Hat-tip: English Rose

Like the TARDIS

A WOULD-BE MP is being investigated by police after it emerged 27 people are registered to vote at his house.

And officers are also probing claims a prospective councillor has five people registered at his home who are also listed at other properties in the same town.

Both Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate Mohammed Afzal Anwar and Labour Pendle Council candidate Mohammed Tariq have insisted they have done nothing wrong.

Police launched their investigation after separate allegations were made to Pendle Council and Lancashire Constabulary by the Liberal Democrat and Labour parties in Pendle.

Mr Anwar said there was nothing untoward about the number of voters living at his terraced home which is 214 to 216 Manchester Road, Nelson, and consists of two houses knocked into one.

He said that 27 people were registered to vote at the property, but that not all were resident in this country at any one time.

Mr Anwar said no postal or proxy votes would be requested for the property.

He said that he had discussed the situation with election officials at Pendle Council.

Mr Anwar said: "There are different people who are living in different parts of the properties. There are certain people who go abroad from time to time. One or two are students who have been in Poland for example.

"And other people are going (abroad) and coming back. There will be no postal or proxy votes issued from this address."

His election agent, Coun Tony Greaves, said the property was inhabited by Mr Anwar, his father, three brothers, their respective families and "contains 24 bedrooms."

Only two people registered at the addresses, who were currently resident in Pakistan, were not entitled to vote, said Coun Greaves.

Labour party officials asked Pendle police to launch a probe amid claims that not all residents living there should be entitled to vote.

The claims followed Liberal Democrat allegations over Labour candidate Mohammed Tariq, who is standing in Whitefield ward in next month's Pendle Council elections.

He is accused of having five people registered at his Portland Street home who are also registered at other properties elsewhere in Nelson.

Pendle Labour group leader Mohammed Iqbal is Mr Tariq's election agent and said the prospective councillor had done nothing wrong.

He said: "I have looked into Lord Greaves's allegations concerning Mr Tariq. They seem to centre round two members of our candidate's family."

Police confirmed that they were investigating allegations of electoral fraud in Pendle.

And, of course, there really is very little to be said, pending the result of the police investigation(s). Except that they must be pretty impressive terraced houses that Mr Anwar has, to be capable of yielding twelve bedrooms each. Should the allegations against him prove to be without foundation, we can only hope that those in authority will utilise his evident talents, and task him with solving the nation's housing shortage!

Hat-tip: The Green Arrow

Postscript: Meanwhile, former Slough Tory councillor Eshaq Khan has been charged with conspiracy to defraud, as have four of his campaign workers, all of whom have also been charged with offences under the Representation of the People Act 1983. Last month, an election court found Khan guilty of vote-rigging, in the closely contested election for the town's Central Ward.

Eshaq Khan guilty

In January I wrote about the allegations that Slough Tory councillor Eshaq Khan had been indulging in a spot of vote-rigging. At that time, the hearing into Khan's conduct was still ongoing. Now, however, the election court has reached its verdict, concluding that Khan did indeed engage in large-scale vote-rigging:

...Khan was found guilty at a special High Court election hearing in Slough council chamber of corrupt and illegal practices to secure his election. He was stripped of his seat and banned from standing for office for five years. He now faces a police inquiry.

Khan, 50, won his marginal seat in Central Ward after his team registered hundreds of “ghost voters” in the month before the election and cast votes using fraudulent postal ballots.

He and his team compounded the fraud with a botched cover-up that included poorly forged tenancy agreements and statements from bogus voters, and an attempt to intimidate a witness. Thames Valley Police said that it would widen its inquiry into the case in light of the judge’s accusations of perjury and attempts to pervert the course of justice by supporters of Khan.

Three people have been arrested in connection with the case. Police have interviewed another three. The Times understands that they include Khan and a leading figure in his campaign, Mohammed Basharat Khan.

The election team registered fictitious voters at derelict houses and claimed that as many as 12 voters were living at two-bedroom flats or three-bedroom houses. Khan beat Lydia Simmons, his Labour opponent, by 120 votes but Labour contested the result by bringing an election petition to overturn the result after almost 450 voters were added to the electoral register in the final weeks before the poll, almost all of whom voted by post for the Conservatives.

Labour succeeded in striking 145 “ghost voters” from the electoral roll. The judge accepted that the true figure was likely to run into hundreds.

Witnesses included a handwriting expert, Kim Hughes, who said that 198 of the postal ballot forms were filled in by Mohammed Basharat Khan, described by the judge as “a serial forger”, and another 79 were in the handwriting of the candidate.

Once Labour began to identify ghost voters, Khan and his team produced forged tenancy agreements. Ten of these were produced on the same computer. Khan’s team also produced 46 statements by individuals claiming that they lived at the disputed properties.

Two Polish women were accused of lying by Khan’s allies when they said that they knew nothing of the six and seven Kashmiri voters registered at each of their homes. One witness, Nighat Khan, who was due to give evidence that the five Kashmiris registered at her flat were fictitious, received a visit from a man claiming to be a lawyer. He produced a typed letter that he asked her to sign, saying that she would then not have to attend the hearing. The court received a letter allegedly from Ms Khan claiming that she was too ill to attend.

This case illustrated two particularly common themes in vote-rigging cases. The first is the potential for misuse offered by the postal voting system. Richard Mawrey QC, who presided over Khan's case, said that the present system whereby one can obtain a postal vote on demand (first introduced by Labour in 32 areas in 2000, and subsequently expanded) was "lethal to the democratic process". The Electoral Commission has also called for tighter controls on postal voting, as has Sir Christopher Kelly, the Chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. Clearly, postal voting is a problem - if nothing else, it makes vote-rigging easier, for those inclined to engage in it. It's also completely unnecessary, since the vast majority of people can quite easily vote in person, if they want to. Personally, I see no reason whatsoever not to go back to the pre-2000 system, where postal votes were only ever given to those who were genuinely unable to make it to the polling station.

However, there is another feature common to almost all of the various instances of vote-rigging that have been exposed over the past few years. Arguably, this second feature is found even more frequently than postal vote fraud (not, of course, that the two are mutually exclusive). But, while everyone is prepared to point out the problems associated with postal voting, no one seems willing to acknowledge the other, still more common, feature of these cases. I'll give you three guesses...

Postscript: When I first wrote about the allegations against Eshaq Khan, I also mentioned the trial of the former Labour Mayor of Peterborough, Mohammed Choudhary, who was on trial, together with his colleagues Tariq Mahmood and Maqbool Hussein, in relation to another vote-rigging conspiracy, which also involved postal voting. Well, last month Mahmood was convicted of 14 counts of forgery, and Choudhary and Hussein of four counts each. They now face likely prison sentences. Clearly, they weren't such highly skilled vote-riggers as Eshaq Khan, because, despite their spot of electoral fraud, they still lost the election!

Amusingly, seven of the twelve comments made by members of the public about the Peterborough case, on the website of the town's Evening Telegraph newspaper, have been deleted, as "unsuitable". Perhaps they drew the link that must not be drawn...

More (alleged) vote-rigging

A HEARING, which will investigate whether a borough councillor of 23 years lost her seat illegally, is to begin in Slough tomorrow (Monday).

The Election Petition hearing will delve deeper into results in the Central ward in May last year.

Labour’s Lydia Simmons lost to Conservative Eshaq Khan by 116 votes in May last year, which scuppered the party’s plans of retaking control of the council it lost in 2004.

The two-week hearing in the council chambers at Slough Town Hall will allow both sides to present evidence and a QC will gauge if anything untoward has happened.

The Labour group is expected to outline how some voters were registered to derelict homes and a large number of voters were registered to single properties.

[...]

The hearing is separate to the ongoing police investigation into voting fraud. Three Slough men have been arrested on suspicion of false applications to vote by post in connection with the elections in May 2007.

In the interests of fairness I will say two things. First, Khan denies all the accusations that have been made. Until the hearing reaches its conclusion, we will not know what the exact truth of the matter is.

Secondly, there are those who might attempt to use this kind of case to "smear an entire community". That would of course be very wrong: although the alleged perpetrator is a Tory, I am assured that the vast majority of moderate Tories are entirely supportive of democracy. And, while it is true that a tiny minority of alleged extremist Tories (Abdul Razaq, Raja Akhtar, and Mohammed Khaliq in Peterborough; Haroon Rashid, Jamshed Khan, and Reis Khan in Bradford; Iftikhar Hussain in Birmingham) are currently undergoing trial for vote-rigging, there have also been Labour activists (Muhammad Afzal, Mohammed Islam, and Mohammed Kazi in Birmingham; Muhammed Hussain in Blackburn) who have been either convicted of electoral fraud, or found to have engaged in it by an election commissioner, besides the former Labour mayor of Peterborough, Mohammed Choudhary, who is currently on trial for vote-rigging, alongside Tariq Mahmood and Maqbool Hussain. And Lib Dems have also been caught participating in some dubious electoral practices: in 2006, Burnley councillors Manzur Hussain and Mozaquir Ali were jailed for their part in a 2004 vote-rigging conspiracy, while last May Birmingham Lib Dem activists Zaker Choudhry and Mohammed Saeed were arrested over accusations of electoral impropriety. I think that it should therefore be abundantly evident to all but the most hardened and intolerant Toryphobe, that there are individuals within all political parties who show insufficient respect to democracy, and that to suggest that any one group was more likely than others to engage in vote-rigging would be the height of bigotry. So there!

Hat-tip: The Green Arrow

Democracy, Islamic-style

A Conservative parliamentary candidate and two former Tory councillors will appear in court this week in connection with a suspected vote-rigging conspiracy that was uncovered by The Times.

They are among seven men accused of electoral fraud following a lengthy police investigation into alleged malpractice in Bradford, mostly relating to the use of postal ballots.

The criminal inquiry was prompted by an article in The Times that exposed postal voting irregularities in the Bradford West constituency during the 2005 general election campaign.

Those charged include Haroon Rashid, 37, from Buckinghamshire, who stood as the unsuccessful Tory candidate in Bradford West.

Mr Rashid has been a member of the Conservative Party for more than 15 years and an active campaigner for increased Asian representation.

In the run-up to the 2005 poll he was photographed with then Tory leader Michael Howard and other leading Conservatives, including Baroness Thatcher.

Also due to appear before Bradford magistrates on Wednesday are two former Conservative councillors in the city, Jamshed Khan, 53, and Reis Khan, 38.

Hmm. I wonder whether Messrs Rashid, Khan, and Khan have anything else in common, beyond the fact that they are all Tories?

And could there be some common factor linking this case to this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one?

Respectable, mainstream politics

A Labour councillor who took an “unwinnable” seat from the Liberal Democrats did so by using smear campaign against her opponent, a court has heard.

Miranda Grell, a 29-year-old aide to the Deputy Mayor of London, appeared to have a glittering political career ahead of her.

A rising star in the Labour ranks, she had been photographed with high-profile figures, including Cherie Blair and Jesse Jackson, and many saw her election to Waltham Forest Borough Council, East London, as the first step on her road to high office.

But yesterday, the Manchester and LSE graduate appeared at Waltham Forest magistrates’ court accused of labelling her rival a paedophile to win the seat. The court heard that Ms Grell told voters that Barry Smith, an incumbent Liberal Democrat councillor, slept with underage Thai boys and was “dirty”.

Mr Smith, 56, a high-profile member of the council cabinet who has a long-term, 39-year-old Malaysian partner, lost his seat by 28 votes. He broke down in tears yesterday as he told of the impact that Ms Grell’s alleged lies had on him.

Gareth Branston, prosecuting, said that during her election campaign Ms Grell, whose parents came to England from Dominica in 1973, told voters: “Don’t vote for Barry because he’s a paedophile.” She led a “whispering campaign” designed to play on constituents’ “fears and aversion to paedophiles”, he claimed.

Ms Grell, who cites Barbara Castle and the suffragettes among her political heroes, is charged under the Representation of the People Act 1983 with four counts of making false statements about another candidate in order to gain an electoral advantage.

She denies all the allegations. Paul Williams, for the defence, said that the accusations against her were “some sort of a Liberal Democrat group conspiracy” and that the court case was now being used as “a political weapon” to attack Ms Grell.

So, if she's guilty, then a relatively senior Labour official and councillor has been caught spreading obscene lies about a political opponent. Lies, indeed, which could potentially have put him in quite serious danger; Mr Smith said in his evidence that after the lies were allegedly spread, he was threatened and spat at in the street.

Or, if Grell is innocent, then the Lib Dems would appear to have brought about a court case in a bid to smear an opponent, and individual Lib Dem supporters might even have committed perjury.

Either way, it doesn't look good, does it?

Labour rigging the vote in Leeds

An undercover Sunday Times reporter has recorded Leeds Labour councillors Keith Wakefield and Graham Hyde urging student activists in the city to break electoral law in the party's desperate bid to stave off annihilation in Thursday's local elections.
Wakefield also praised something which he calls the "Asian voting system", and which everyone else calls 'Muslim vote-rigging'. I have written a post on the subject over at ATW.