"Big Les Wade" wrote in message
news:ceHAxeO2F8tIFwQy@obviously.invalid...
> M.I.5¾ posted
>>I have had first hand experience of this as I have served as an official
>>witness at several local and general elections (including one election
>>that was rigged).
>
> How was it rigged and how did you discover it?
>
I didn't discover it. It was rumbled before the election but not in time to
reprint the ballot papers.
In the previous election (this was a local election), the vote was close
with labour gaining a wafer thin majority. In the subject election, an
independant labour candidate appeared which was obviously going to split the
labour vote somewhat. It was when the returning officer posted all the
statutory bumph to the candidates that the scam came to light. The chairman
of the local young conservatives had put his girl friend up as this
independant labour candidate. But he hadn't told her, so she contacted the
returning officer when she got all the bumph - and the scam was exposed. It
also turned out that he had forged signatures of a couple of asian members
of the comunity - who just happened to be illiterate.
When the tory candidate won (as the non existent independant labour polled
quite a few votes), the result was objected to and eventually the election
had to be rerun. The tory candidate and his agent were demonstably not in
on the scam. If they had been they would simply have been disqualified and
probably even gaoled.
Labour won the rerun and the Chairman of the local conservatives found out
much about porridge.
Not a direct witness matter: but in another (general election) there was an
objection lodged because labour were printing and distributing election
material before the official start of the campaign (and thus were not
including it in the official election expenditure accounts). They got away
with it but only because when added into their expenditure, they came in
under the expenditure limit - but only just.
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