Ghosts of Slough
- 18 Mar 08, 06:58 PM
Whilst my fellow political journalists all flocked to Ken Livingstone’s campaign launch in London, I took the train to Slough for a far more interesting story, largely ignored by the Westminster pack, and which I therefore had almost to myself.
There was much jubilation in the Slough Labour Party after an election court disqualified a local Conservative councillor, Eshaq Khan, for corrupt and fraudulent election practices.
Mr Khan was found to have secured his election last May by registering at various properties around his ward more than a hundred “ghost” voters – people who didn’t exist or weren’t entitled to be on the voting register - and who then, of course, voted for him.
Criminal trial
Khan was also accused by the judge Richard Mawry of perverting the course of justice by getting several witnesses to commit what the judge called “blatant” and “bare-faced perjury” during the recent election court case to try and save his skin.
A criminal trial now looks likely. Three men have already been arrested and police inquiries are continuing.
The judge also awarded costs against Khan. The Conservative Party won’t say if they’ve agreed to pay them - which strongly suggests to me that they have. Lord Ashcroft may race a total bill of around £500,000 for the party.
Richard Mawry’s judgement may be great news for Labour in Slough, but it will be less welcome to Labour nationally.
Mawry, you may recall, was the judge who presided over the Birmingham election fraud case in the spring of 2005, when he compared Birmingham to a banana republic and was scathing about this government’s introduction of postal voting on demand.
'Disastrous experiment'
After that notorious case ministers tried to tighten the rules on postal votes, but Mawry claimed today that these changes had made little difference and that voting fraud was an easy as ever. Indeed, if anything, Mawry’s judgement today was more scathing of government policy than it was in Birmingham three years ago.
The problem, he said, was not just the “disastrous experiment of postal voting on demand”, but the extremely lax system of electoral registration in this country.
“Great Britain’s system of voter registration may well have been a quaint but harmless anomaly while personal voting was the norm but the introduction of postal voting on demand has made it lethal to the democratic process.”
Roll-stuffing, as the Australians call it, “is childishly simple to commit,” said Mawry, “and very difficult to detect.
'Decent choice'
To ignore the possibility that it is widespread, particularly in local elections, is a policy that an ostrich would despise.”
Above all, he criticised the belief by many Labour people that making it easier for people to vote, though postal ballots, would boost voting turn-out.
What really boost turn-out, he argued, was giving voters a decent choice. He pointed to the 85% turnout in last year’s French presidential election (where there’s no easy postal voting) as a good example of this and concluded: “It’s not how you vote that brings out the voters. It’s the choices you are given.”
In speaking out so boldly, Richard Mawry is surely becoming something of a pain in the neck for this government, rather like Elizabeth Filkin and Sir Alistair Graham.
But he should be careful. They both lost their jobs.
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