Brick Lane's Vote Riggers
From yesterday's Evening Standard:
Exposed: Brick Lane's vote riggers
...
The first floor is the locked-up office of a travel agent. It is the flat on the second and third floors that is of interest. According to the electoral register, this flat, comprising four small rooms and a tiny landing, contains no fewer than 12 Bangladeshi voters.
They all appeared on the electoral roll at 118 Brick Lane this year. None of them was registered at this address before. And they certainly don’t live here. “We live here,” says Sam Butler and his flatmates, a Belgian, Gilles Ubaghs, and two Canadians, Craig and Chuck. “And the tenants before us were white, too.”
...
The flat occupied by Sam, Gilles, Craig and Chuck is a classic place for a vote-rigging scam. All you have to do is register a certain number of fake voters, apply for postal votes in their name and come and pick them up. The street door looks locked, but a not-very-hefty nudge of the shoulder is enough to open it and bring you on to the communal staircase, with the newly-arrived post waiting at the bottom.
Then Gilles remembers something.
“A week ago, a whole stack of envelopes arrived in the hall,” he says. “Not addressed to any of us. They had ‘You need this to vote — very important document,’ or something like that, on them. I left them on the steps. The next day they were all gone.”
...
Brick Lane is a major artery of Britain’s most bitterly-contested constituency, Bethnal Green and Bow, where Labour’s Oona King is fighting the anti-war war-machine of George Galloway and the Respect party. Hundreds of journalists have flocked to the East End, writing stories about how the seat will, or will not, be decided by the war, the economy, the state of the housing, King’s record as an MP.
It is equally possible, however, that Bethnal Green and Bow will not be decided by any of those things, but by fraud, intimidation and direct threats. Few seats can be more vulnerable. Voter turnover is huge, perhaps a third a year. Many Bangladeshi voters don’t understand the voting process, and are susceptible to community pressures of a sort no longer found in other parts of British society. And the voting roll, the basis for any fair election, is, at best, grossly inadequate.
...
Some of it may, indeed, be freelance; Ron McKay, Galloway’s spokesman, says they’ve been approached by someone offering 200 votes at £100 a throw.
Exposed: Brick Lane's vote riggers
...
The first floor is the locked-up office of a travel agent. It is the flat on the second and third floors that is of interest. According to the electoral register, this flat, comprising four small rooms and a tiny landing, contains no fewer than 12 Bangladeshi voters.
They all appeared on the electoral roll at 118 Brick Lane this year. None of them was registered at this address before. And they certainly don’t live here. “We live here,” says Sam Butler and his flatmates, a Belgian, Gilles Ubaghs, and two Canadians, Craig and Chuck. “And the tenants before us were white, too.”
...
The flat occupied by Sam, Gilles, Craig and Chuck is a classic place for a vote-rigging scam. All you have to do is register a certain number of fake voters, apply for postal votes in their name and come and pick them up. The street door looks locked, but a not-very-hefty nudge of the shoulder is enough to open it and bring you on to the communal staircase, with the newly-arrived post waiting at the bottom.
Then Gilles remembers something.
“A week ago, a whole stack of envelopes arrived in the hall,” he says. “Not addressed to any of us. They had ‘You need this to vote — very important document,’ or something like that, on them. I left them on the steps. The next day they were all gone.”
...
Brick Lane is a major artery of Britain’s most bitterly-contested constituency, Bethnal Green and Bow, where Labour’s Oona King is fighting the anti-war war-machine of George Galloway and the Respect party. Hundreds of journalists have flocked to the East End, writing stories about how the seat will, or will not, be decided by the war, the economy, the state of the housing, King’s record as an MP.
It is equally possible, however, that Bethnal Green and Bow will not be decided by any of those things, but by fraud, intimidation and direct threats. Few seats can be more vulnerable. Voter turnover is huge, perhaps a third a year. Many Bangladeshi voters don’t understand the voting process, and are susceptible to community pressures of a sort no longer found in other parts of British society. And the voting roll, the basis for any fair election, is, at best, grossly inadequate.
...
Some of it may, indeed, be freelance; Ron McKay, Galloway’s spokesman, says they’ve been approached by someone offering 200 votes at £100 a throw.
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