Ministry for Fair Play
Official: UK election process slightly dodgy
How Britons watched the 2000 US Presidential election with amazement and incredulity. Confusion? Hanging chads? Recounts? Voters being omitted? That could never happen on this glorious island, surely? Why, Westmonster would place bets that we could remove all sorts of electoral regulations and the process would still be completely fair, thanks to the good-old-fashioned British love of fair play and derring-do. Tally ho!
Actually, a sneaking suspicion has emerged that that might not be the case. A report by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust - nope, us neither - has revealed that the UK voting system may be at serious risk of falling prey to fraud.
The report rants that electoral standards in this country fall far behind many of our foreign neighbours, and also points out that - what with there being 42 convictions for electoral fraud within the last seven years - the system is wide open to all sorts of dubious manhandling.
'Previously robust administration systems' - which presumably means a few local council workers pulling a late shift at the local town hall and sifting through the ballots - have apparently reached 'breaking point.' A drastic overhaul is clearly called for, and no-one would appear to agree more than report author Stuart Wilks-Heeg, who claims:
"It's very concerning that ministers tend to focus on quick fixes to solve declining turnout and ignore genuine concerns about how easy it can be to cheat the system."
So - a word to anyone manning the polling booths this Thursday. If three midgets stood on top of each other inside a trenchcoat turn up with a ballot paper in the name of 'Mike Hunt', it's probably best to go with that suspicious gut instinct.
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