Fear of election fraud ahead of vote for mayor
POLITICIANS last night warned of a “serious collapse of confidence” in London’s electoral system after City A.M. discovered a flat that has just two adult residents – but seven active voters.
Ahead of this week’s mayoral election we visited an address in Brune House, Shoreditch – just five minute’s walk from Liverpool Street station – where a resident confirmed that two adults lived in the small flat.
But we have learnt that seven postal votes were returned by adults registered at the address in last week’s local council election.
The same electoral roll and postal voting entitlement will be used for Thursday’s Mayor of London election, raising fears that the outcome could be affected by fraudulent votes.
Last week police opened an investigation into allegations of postal voting fraud and vote harvesting in Tower Hamlets.
But when this newspaper asked Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman whether he was concerned by allegations of electoral fraud in the borough, he replied: “I have no comment to make at this time.”
Labour’s Ken Livingstone campaigned for Rahman in 2010, against his own party’s candidate.
Conservative councillor Peter Golds said yesterday: “There have been concerns about the electoral register and postal voting in Tower Hamlets for years, yet the Electoral Commission say that the Tower Hamlets systems are ‘robust’. At the election on Thursday there will be phantom voters and dubious postal votes in this one borough.”
Last week Golds told City A.M. that he would “hate” the election for Mayor of London to be decided by votes in Tower Hamlets.
In a separate case we visited a three-bedroom house in Newham where fourteen adults are registered to vote. A resident confirmed that just six of the people on the electoral roll currently live at the address.