Region tops shame league for poll fraud

Greater Manchester had the largest number of fraud cases in local elections last year, the Electoral Commission (EC) has revealed.

The area had 12 malpractice cases. South Wales, the West Midlands and Thames Valley were close behind with 11, the EC said.

But overall out of the 16 million votes cast in the local, London mayoral and London Assembly ballots there were just 103 “malpractice” cases, it said.

The cases ranged from providing false information to multiple voting. The votes last year were cast in nearly 4,000 separate elections involving over 13,500 candidates.

During Oldham’s local election campaign in April a man was arrested after he offered his postal vote to a stranger, and around 100 Polish workers were registered for postal votes in Alexandra ward without their knowledge.

Earlier abuses of the postal vote system uncovered in Oldham, and the local police’s special expertise in dealing with it, helped to tighten up the laws on voting in 2007.

Jenny Watson, the EC chairman, said there were still “vulnerabilities” in the system but the data should help to reassure voters.

She said: “It’s important that when people cast their vote, they can have confidence that the electoral system is secure.

“The data in our report — the first of its kind — should go a long way to reassuring voters that the most recent elections were free from major incidents of electoral fraud.”