Are Labour committing Electoral Fraud?

10.15.00am BST (GMT +0100) Mon 30th Apr 2007

Postal vote envelopes

The Sunday Times yesterday reported postal vote problems in Leeds. All three main parties, meanwhile, have signed up to the Electoral Commission's code of conduct. This means candidates and canvassers will not handle or help voters complete their postal ballot papers, that they encourage voters to post ballot papers themselves and if asked to take a completed ballot paper, to make sure the voter has sealed it first. They must also ensure voters complete ballot papers in secret, and not solicit completed postal ballot papers from electors.

The Sunday Times. at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article1719870.ece, reports that an undercover reporter posing as a student activist was part of a team told by the leader of the Labour group on the council, Keith Wakefield, and a fellow Labour politician, to collect postal votes in two key wards, and if necessary "help" voters fill in the forms. The other councillor, Graham Hyde, who worked in the Commons for George Mudie, the former Labour deputy chief whip, warned the canvassers not to get caught with any postal voting forms on them.

They were report Every aspect of the code, in other words, was breached. As David Crompton, assistant chief constable of West Yorkshire, put it when told of Labour's actions: "This is extremely sharp practice and a clear breach of the guidelines. We will now be looking at this carefully to determine whether a crime has been committed." Whatever the police do, the Labour party should suspend the councillors involved.