Voting fraud

There is serious concern that some of Thursday's election results could be affected by voting fraud. Police are investigat-ing over 50 complaints of irregularities including many suspicious postal votes.

In two highly marginal East London seats, thousands of requests for postal votes arrived too late to check if they are genuine or not.

In some cases, amazingly high numbers of voters are supposedly living in tiny flats only suitable for a small family. An Independent journalist looking into the fraud claims was viciously beaten up by local teenagers in Bow, East London. Police have questioned three Labour candidates about the claims.

There were numerous fraud inquiries in the previous general election, some of which led to convictions.

Postal votes are especially vulnerable to abuse as it's difficult to check both the voter's identity and the validity of the vote cast.

There have been many instances of postal votes being sent via political parties which can register a phoney vote for their own party. There are also cases of confused elderly people being tricked into voting for a party they don't support.

The whole postal vote system needs a thorough overhaul to prevent wholesale deception, particularly when the sudden popularity of the Liberal Democrats means that in this election many more seats are likely to change hands.

I predict a big increase in fraud investigations after the election, as candidates up and down the country cheated of victory query the results and suspect something fishy. A once highly-respected voting system is unfortunately being corrupted and not enough is being done to prevent the corruption.
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And today's poser: What are rumbledethumps? (a) a small Australian shrub (b) a poor-sighted American rodent (c) a Scottish delicacy