Editorial Note: IN May 2017, Northern Voice produced the piece of investigative journalism below in which we tried to shed light on the shady goings on in the Spotland and Falinge ward. That was at a time when mysteriously a marked ballot register disappeared without adequate explanation. Since then the voting irregularities of the new Councillor Faisal Rana has further damaged the image of Rochdale.
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In Rochdale, a lack of curiosity at the top?
Written up by Les May based on research by Carl Faulkner and Brian Bamford
THERESA May’s ostensible reason for calling a General Election is
that her slender majority of 12 was an obstacle to passing the
legislation needed to cope with the fallout from the UK leaving the EU.
The cynical amongst you might wonder if it was not also an opportunity
to distract attention from the fact that criminal charges are being
considered by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) against at least 30
individuals in the Conservative party. Some have been MPs in the 2015
parliament and contributing to Theresa’s slim majority, some will be
candidates in this election and could be re-elected. Electoral fraud
isn’t just something that happens in other countries it happens here
too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud
It’s
not just the Tories who have played fast and loose with the rules on
election expenditure. In recent years Labour and the LibDems have both
been fined by the Electoral Commission for breaking election expense
rules. What makes the Tory case different is that the CPS is
investigating whether there is evidence that candidates and their agents
may be guilty of filing false spending returns. If they are both could
be charged with fraud.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/alexandra-runswick/election-expenses_b_16146174.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tory-election-fraud-prosecutions-cps-election-campaign-result-overturn-battle-bus-a7689801.html
This type of fraud is easy to detect once you are
alerted to what is happening. There’s always a
‘paper trail’. In fact
a year ago as part of its
‘Check a Tory’ campaign the
Daily Mirror put
the election expenses of Tory MPs on line and invited readers to
scrutinise them. What’s much harder to detect is when a small group,
with or without the tacit agreement of local party bosses, exploit
weaknesses in the system to rig the ballot. Having a system which
‘on
paper’ is foolproof, is fallible if the people who are supposed to
implement it fall down on the job.
In August 2015, the
government put out a press release announcing that,
‘Sir Eric Pickles,
the Government’s Anti-Corruption Champion’, was to review the question
of electoral fraud.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/sir-eric-pickles-to-examine-electoral-fraud
A year later it was published.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/sir-eric-pickles-publishes-report-into-tackling-electoral-fraud
So
far so good. But as I noted above any system is only as good as the
people who implement it. This is what the Electoral Commission have to
say about those people:
‘Local Electoral Registration
Officers (EROs) and Returning Officers (ROs) manage elections, and are
uniquely placed to detect and prevent electoral fraud. They should have
robust plans in place to identify any suspicious behaviour and should
work with the police to investigate any potential electoral fraud.’ (my
emphasis)
But what actually happens when something
‘suspicious’ does occur. Just how easy is it to get anyone to take
notice? Things seem to have changed in Rochdale since 2011 when
ex-council leader Colin Lambert was outspoken about what needed to be
done.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-13192008
Over a year ago
Northern Voices was sent the extremely well documented
correspondence between a candidate in the Spotland and Falinge ward at
last years Rochdale Council elections, and the various bodies which are
supposed to deal with questions of electoral fraud. It runs to some 22
pages.
At that election a
'marked register' went
missing. It should have been handed to the Returning Officer at the
point at which the ballot box and other official documents were
delivered by the Presiding Officer at the close of poll. It was either
accidentally lost or deliberately stolen. There can be no reason why
one of these alternative explanations should be favoured over the other.
If we are to take the fight against electoral fraud seriously the
‘precautionary principle’ suggests that in the absence of evidence to
the contrary it should be assumed that it was stolen, the police should
be informed to that effect and a full investigation launched. It did
not happen.
What is clear from this correspondence is
that, in spite of Pickles bluster in
The Telegraph:
'We should never be
frightened to look under the rock when what is crawling underneath
threatens us all. It is time to take action to take on the electoral
crooks and defend Britain’s free and fair elections', when a complaint
is made, no one wants to shoulder the responsibility for making sure
that a proper investigation is launched. It seems that Pickles was
right about one thing,
‘the authorities are in a “state of denial” and
are “turning a blind eye” to election fraud.’
Equally
worrying is that the complainant, Carl Faulkner, who stood as an
independent candidate, claims that he was not informed of the loss of
the missing register as he should have been and that he was told
‘all
candidates were informed about the missing register'.
Northern Voices
made an effort to contact the other candidates to find out if and when
they were told about the missing register.
Mick Coates,
the Green candidate, was quite clear that he had not been officially
informed that the mark register was missing.
Enquires with the Lib-Dems
suggested that this was also the case with their candidate Matthew
Allen, and Ian Duckworth, Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party, was
unable to confirm that their candidate, Steven Scholes, had been
informed either.
Wendy Cox the Labour candidate did not
answer the question directly but said:
'Thank you for your email. I have
passed this to the electoral officer.'
Quite why she felt she had to
ask the electoral officer whether she had been informed, is unclear at
this point. A week later she was asked if there had been any response
and replied suggesting that
NV should contact the electoral officer
directly. On the 10th April the joint editor of
NV wrote to the RMBC
Chief Executive, Steve Rumbelow for clarification.
(His
reply to the NV joint editor, Brian Bamford, is printed below together with the response of the original
complainant, Carl Faulkner. Copies of the full correspondence between
the complainant and the various bodies which are supposed to deal with
questions of electoral fraud can be made available by e-mail from
Northern Voices. It shows clearly that it was the complainant who
initiated the contact with the Cabinet Office, Electoral Commission and
Police not RMBC.)
The possibility that the register was
in fact stolen has been excluded from consideration
a priori, even
though at the time an exhaustive and unsuccessful search was made at the
polling station, and even of people’s cars. The consequence of
deciding that a register was
‘definitely lost’ not
‘possibly stolen’ is
that there is a convenient
‘fall guy’ in the form of whoever was in
charge of that polling station. They are deemed to have
‘lost’ it and
their reputation must suffer as a consequence.
In all this the
one thing that is very clear is that whoever told the complainant that
‘all candidates were informed about the missing register' was telling a
porky pie. And these are the people we have to trust when it comes to
combating electoral fraud. Robust plans to identify potential electoral
fraud? I think not.
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Dear Mr Bamford
Thank you for your recent enquiry. Please accept my apologies for the delay in response.
To
clarify, the marked register is the copy of the electoral register used
in polling stations. It serves as the record of who has voted in the
election, and it is kept for a year after the election. The marked
register does not indicate who electors voted for, nor does it contain
ballot paper numbers.
Legislation provides that a variety of
parties are eligible to access copies of the marked register after an
election. Anyone can inspect the marked register, but only certain
people can purchase a copy.
This includes individual candidates and
political party representatives. Usually, copies are requested by and
provided to party representatives who would then disseminate the
information to their colleagues, including candidates.
All those
who requested copies of the marked registers were informed that a
register had not been returned following the close of poll and the steps
that had been taken in an attempt to locate it, both immediately after
the close of poll and in the days following the election.
In
addition, the Council has been in contact with the Cabinet Office,
Electoral Commission and Police on the matter who were satisfied with
the steps that had been taken and the measures put in place to prevent
any future issues of a similar nature.
Yours Sincerely
Steve Rumbelow
And here are Mr Faulkner’s observations:
1)
Without him actually stating it, it is clear that people were only
going to be informed if and when a copy of the register was requested.
That is not the same as informing all candidates as a matter of course.
It reiterates my position that there was a concerted attempt to conceal
the incident by keeping quiet about it.
2) I feel he is
attempting to downplay the importance of the marked register, by
portraying it as nothing more than a post-election tool for political
parties /candidates / interested persons. This is not the case - it’s
primary purpose is as an anti-fraud document - but one which can be
utilised by political parties etc.
3) All contact with
the police, Cabinet Office and Electoral Commission was initiated by me.
They contacted RMBC - not the other way round as his response could be
taken to mean.
4) What are the ‘steps’ put in place that
did not exist before? The issue is not about how, who, why or exactly
when the register went missing but that no candidates nor the police
were informed at the time or during the following 21 days.
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