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.

the Mugabe School of Electoral Engineering (Gipton, Leeds)

Robert Mugabe, Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, collaborating with the local Labour party, is establishing the first school of Electoral Engineering in the recently named "Robert Mugabe Avenue" of sunny Gipton, Leeds.

The friend of an uncle of the wife of Mugabe's chiropodist overheard him saying, "We welcome the new alliance and school. It is a wonderful opportunity to share our knowledge. Already, I have learned great things. For example, violence and intimidation aren't needed to rig an election, it's very last century. The postal vote and bored friendless students is all that's required".

In 2000, the UK government passed a law allowing postal votes on demand – in other words, you no longer need a compelling reason to vote via post. In some wards, this has resulted in 25% of the electorate registering for postal voting.

Last year in Gipton, rival candidates complained about the Labour party’s pre-election activities regarding abuse of the postal voting system ;

“At the count, the ballot boxes were opened first and the Liberal Democrats had a commanding lead. Then the postal votes were opened and they were almost all Labour. everyone present had suspicions that something was afoot.”

An undercover reporter from the Times infiltrated the local Labour party in the run up to tomorrows local elections. Local Labour activists, co-ordinated by Labour Councillor Graham Hyde, have been knocking on doors, helping voters fill out polling cards and offering to post them - a particularly effective tactic with the elderly.

The Times will shortly be handing a dossier to the police on their behaviour. This will include transcripts of secretly recorded conversations where Hyde admitted the instructions to collect postal votes were “illegal” and warned student activists,: “Don’t get caught with any on you. We are not supposed to collect them.”

Hyde then said: “We also want to check they are voting Labour as well... If they are voting Liberal Dem, then don’t offer to put the postal vote in.”

One of the students then said: “Yes, I’ll post that for you.”

Hyde laughed and added: “Yes, that’s it, and then it ends up in the toilet.”

Our understanding is that so far UN inspectors haven't been approached to monitor the voting day in Leeds, they're busy in Zimbabwe. In any case, the notion that electoral fraud would take place in the heartland of one of the worlds oldest democracies is patently absurd.

Read the full story – it’d be hilarious if it weren't for the fact that this is fucking England and it's the government's party behaving like a bunch of cunts. (sorry Mum).

UPDATE

Birmingham's postal vote sharply down after a vote-rigging scandal there in 2004 which a judge said would "disgrace a banana republic". Judge Richard Mawrey concluded Labour activists had faked thousands of votes to offset a loss of support after the Iraq war.

Barrister Richard Price, an expert on election law, told BBC radio "The reason for the decline in figures is either because the people who were registered for postal votes simply didn't exist ... or because the people who did have postal votes simply no longer have confidence in the integrity of the postal voting system,"

Full story here