Another election result

It used to be an Asian game. Election fraud, vote rigging, ghost voter registration, election posters and cut-outs originated in the Far East I assume. I might be wrong. But when we were kids those qualities were totally owned by our part of the world. Now it has slipped through our fingers and has become a part of daily politics in Great Britain. In some areas on a greater scale.

Pakistan born Scottish Labour MP Mohammad Sarwa was the first Asian MP to be charged with election offences in the UK. But he was acquitted later. Since then various forms of election fraud have emerged, especially in some boroughs in London. It was alleged that in the 2010 Local Government elections many hundreds of ghost votes were cast by post.

No identity checking or finger marking ever happens at UK elections. The Presiding Officer just asks your name and the address before handing the ballot paper to vote. It is very easy to vote in someone else's name and the address.

The most examined act of election fraud emerged in the year 2010 in London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is situated in the East part of London. There were 3,123 voter registration requests done just a few days prior to the election. Although it was a very unusual situation the officers at the council had no time to verify the names and the addresses. Later, the Police made investigations on 23 allegations but made no arrests.

Now in a few weeks on May 3rd, 152 councils in the UK will hold elections, including the Mayoral in London. The same Tower Hamlets Council has been investigated by the Evening Standard newspaper for possible election fraud. It has come to light that a total of 550 people have been registered to vote in some 64 properties in the borough. It is an average of three people per bedroom. In one case 12 adults were listed as living at a three bedroom flat in the area. The council was forced to remove 127 names from the roll after a review by the Electoral Commission. They found another property where 10 people were registered was in fact an empty one. This clearly shows that there is a ghost hand trying to register phantom voters to gain undue advantages.

Adding more to the turmoil, it was found that Tower Hamlets council had to remove a mystery resident listed at the home address of its Labour Party Mayor Lutfur Rahman. Rahman, a solicitor by profession, was born in Bangladesh and then moved to the United Kingdom at a young age.