The election?

[R1Geezer]

Anyone know if there are indpendent observers from, for example, Rhodesia, checking our election is not bent?

[AB Editor]

Yes actually. I think NZ sent someone?

This should start any research you're after: http://www.go-jamaica..._article.php?id=18913

Spare Ed

[Gromit]

http://www.direct.gov...ndelections/DG_073245

[anotheoldgit]

Will they be there in the capacity of observers or 'technical advisors'?

[modeller]

There are some observers from Kenya

[Dodger666]

Afghan President Hamid Khazi is in the UK to ensure our election is run correctly and all votes counted.

[Raleigh]

Please find Rhodesia for me on a map: my girlfriend used to live there and it seems to have disappeared.

[youngmafbog]

Dont worry R1, already there are the usual cases of postal voting fraud together with kids being sent voting papers.

[jake-the-peg]

They're not kids they're the leaders of the opposition!

[New Judge]

There is concern on an unprecedented scale that widespread electoral fraud is being perpetrated in today’s election. The police have launched at least 50 enquiries, with 28 claims of major abuse in twelve London boroughs alone.

Large numbers of people enrolled on the electoral registers just days before the deadline for postal voting and examples of unrealistic increases in the population of some individual households abound. One house in Tower Hamlets is, according to the register, said to be inhabited by eighteen single men. The people that do genuinely live there have no idea who they are. In another house where a Labour candidate lives with his young family seven adults have suddenly been added to the electoral role for that address.

A study by the Council of Europe in 2008 said that our voting system was open to widespread fraud as it was “childishly simple” to add bogus names to the register and postal voting provides the anonymity to carry out these frauds without detection.

The cause? Labour’s insistence – against advice – to introduce postal voting for anybody that wanted it in 2004. Prior to that a voter had to have a genuine reason for requiring a postal vote. My own view is that before any attempt to reform the electoral system is made, all parties need to consider the implications of these allegations. The simplest way to avoid such a scandal is to revert to the previous system of postal votes only for those in genuine need of one.

And to answer your question, the Commonwealth has sent a team of election monitors to scrutinise today’s results.

[jake-the-peg]

Absolutely dispicable these cheating Lefties NJ

Why do you suppose a Tory has been arrested?

http://news.bbc.co.uk...0/england/8662814.stm

[New Judge]

Hopefully because he has questions to answer concerning voting irregularities, jake.

I make no distinction between the parties in this matter. The example I quoted which did mention the Labour Party member was simply that – an example of which I had the details. If the Conservative in Peterborough is guilty of the same type of offence then he is equally despicable.

But I do stand by the fact that these irregularities were made possible by the thoughtless (or perhaps well thought out – who knows) action of the Labour government in 2004 when they introduced a free- for-all in postal voting.

[jake-the-peg]

And an investigation was held and two results were scrapped

A code of conduct regarding postal votes was drawn up and agreed by all parties

This is rather "yesterdays story" but the Mail seems to be trying to resurrect it - the Tory arrest will rather hamper that!

Danniel Hannan seems to be doing similarly in the Telegraph but resorts to quoting the Mail as he decry's Britans postal voting system.

The fact that there is an all party agreement to the code of practice seems mysteriously to have escaped his notice