POSTAL VOTE FRAUD IS A BIG WORRY AND NEEDS TO BE TACKLED

BY the end of this weekend, nearly a quarter of General Election votes will have been cast.

Ballot papers for postal votes began arriving lastTuesday. Polling experts reckon most are completed and sent back within a few days of their arrival.

That such a large proportion of the electorate now opts out of the ritual journey to the polling station to drop their ballot paper into the black box on election day is worrying. Some public figures have raised concerns about the potential for electoral fraud when postal voting is so widespread after recent national polls including the 2016 EU referendum.

In 2014, a senior judge speculated that fraud was taking place on an “industrial scale” and called for the current system of postal votes on demand to be scrapped. For all the concern, few examples of law breaking have been exposed.

Only 22 cases of electoral fraud relating to postal voting were reported to the authorities after the 2017 general election.Two of those cases led to police cautions while no prosecutions were carried out.

In one of the cases that led to a caution, a suspect put out a plea on social media for unused postal votes. Other cases are reported to have taken place within families where one dominant figure casts votes for the rest of the household.

Prosecution rates are likely to be low because postal vote fraud is so difficult to detect. Ahead of this election, the Government has sought to tighten rules around voter identification at polling stations. Tackling postal vote fraud should be the next step.

TORY aides have been plotting revenge on Channel 4 after it put a block of melting ice in place of an absent Boris for a live television debate about climate change. “If we do win the election, perhaps we could look at relocating Channel 4’s headquarters to Scunthorpe,” said one party wag.