Mugabe say "Vote my friend"

Today we go to the polls.

A little more digging in yesterday's post turned up what really went on in Birmingham, 2004 prompting Richard Mawrey QC, the election commissioner, to claim, " electoral fraud that would disgrace a banana republic"

All six councillors strenuously denied rigging the ballots and being improperly elected. During the trials, which were held at the Birmingham and Midland Institute and lasted four weeks, the court heard evidence of wholesale theft of votes in the city, with thousands of postal ballots being diverted to a "safe house" where they were filled in on an "industrial scale".

The judge said he regretted the government had dismissed recent warnings about the system's failings as "scaremongering". He pointed to a government statement which said: "The systems already in place to deal with the allegations of electoral fraud are clearly working."

Mr Mawrey said: "Anybody who has sat through the case I have just tried and listened to evidence of electoral fraud that would disgrace a banana republic would find this statement surprising. The systems to deal with fraud are not working well... The fact is that there are no systems to deal realistically with fraud and there never have been. Until there are, fraud will continue unabated."

The trial established ;

• The Labour Party organised “massive, corrupt and illegal fraud” in which nearly 3,000 votes were “stolen”
• One Birmingham postman was offered £500 and threatened with death unless he handed over a sack of blank ballots (he took the money)
• Voters who failed to vote Labour had their choices removed by correction fluid and corrected
• Small boys were recruited to nick ballots sticking out of letter boxes
• “Short of writing ‘steal me’ on the envelopes,” said high court judge Richard Mawrey QC, “it is hard to see what more could be done to ensure their coming into the wrong hands”

Applications for postal votes continue to be handled by political parties after the government blocked efforts by the Electoral Commission to prevent further fraud at the general election in 2005.

John Prescott, Deputy Prime Minister defended the Government stance, "It is of great importance to all of us that the number of people who vote is maximised. Indeed, postal ballots increased the number of people voting by millions."

Check out the full rub on the Birmingham Six antics.