EXPECT VOTE FRAUD IN THE COMING UK ELECTION?

We remember the US election day exit polls which showed that John Kerry won both the electoral and the popular vote, with Kerry getting 51% and Bush 48%.

Can you expect some vote fraud in the coming UK general election?

One constituency to watch is Dumfries and Galloway, in Scotland, which at present is held by the Labour Party's Russell Brown.

In the June 2009 Euro-Elections, the result in Dumfries and Galloway was:

Conservatives 12,239 votes

Scottish National Party 8,247

Labour 5,733

In May 2009, a poll for the Mail on Sunday (www.snpdoonhamers.org/.../2009-05) showed Scottish voting intentions, if there was to be a general election:

Scottish National Party – 43%

Labour – 27%

Conservatives – 11%

In 2001, the Labour MP for Dumfries and Galloway, Russell Brown, was 'caught breaking parliamentary rules' by claiming office expenses to which he was 'not entitled'. (Labour MP faces inquiry into office expenses - Telegraph). Brown supported the Iraq war, supports identity cards, supports government policy on post offices, supports the terrorism laws and supports Trident.

If Labour wins Dumfries and Galloway in the 2010 general election, then there is something fishy going on?

Labour is the party of war, poverty, deficits and corruption.

Labour has failed (The Sun Says: Labour's lost it The Sun News)

The Conservative Party's candidate for Dumfries, Peter Duncan, voted very strongly for the Iraq war.

The Conservatives only have one member of parliament in Scotland, because they are also the party of war and poverty.

Dumfries and Galloway has had members of parliament from the three main parties: Conservative, Scottish National Party (SNP) and Labour.

In 1974, SNP candidate George Thompson won Dumries and Galloway from the Conservatives. In 1979, Ian Lang took the seat back for the Conservatives.
In 1997, the SNP's Alasdair Morgan defeated the Conservative Ian Lang.
In 2001, pro-war Peter Duncan became the only Scottish Conservative MP by a margin of 74 votes from the SNP.
In 2005, boundary changes (and postal votes) helped Labour's pro-war Russell Brown win a surprise victory.

In 2010, the key questions are:

1. Will some Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green Party voters switch to the SNP, allowing the SNP to triumph?

2. Will there be election fraud, in order to defeat the SNP?

Russell Brown is the pro-war Labour candidate.
Peter Duncan is the pro-war Conservative candidate.
Andrew Wood is the sensible anti-war Scottish National Party candidate.

The Scottish National Party's Andrew Wood was born in Dumfries and has been a farmer and businessman. According to Andrew Wood, Labour is simply just the Tories in disguise. (Andrew Wood - SNP Westminster Candidate)

The SNP wants to dump Trident missiles in order to save £100 million.

The SNP wants the troops out of Afghanistan.

The SNP believes that "More Nats (SNP) means less cuts".

The SNP believes that Labour's forthcoming spending cuts would mean an £800 million cut for Scotland.

The SNP says it will use its votes to protect Scotland from the coming cuts.

The Conservative Party's George Osborne has already indicated the Conservatives would not chuck out the Scottish parliament's recently passed budget exempting Scotland from the kind of cuts and job losses the rest of the country may see. (Election 2010 party guides: SNP )

Let's look back to the UK general Election of 2005.

Back in 2005, a Channel 4 TV Dispatches programme revealed how Tony Blair's Labour Party faked grassroots support during the General Election.

An undercover Channel 4 reporter, Jenny Kleeman, showed how:

1. Fake letters were sent to local newspapers to show support for Labour’s achievements.

2. Labour activists posed as 'local people' to greet Blair on the campaign trail.

According to The Times, in 2005, : "A QUARTER of the police forces across Britain are investigating last week’s elections in a purge on fraud and malpractice."

According to the Scotsman there are claims that a Labour Party activist in Birmingham kept a ballot box at his home the night before polls opened.

The activist's daughter was a presiding officer for one polling station.

In 1974, Labour's Harold Wilson won 39% of the vote and had a majority of only 3 seats.

In 2005, Labour's Tony Blair won 35% of the vote and had a majority of 67 seats.

According to Robin Cook, former UK Foreign Secretary, a party can normally expect to lose an election if it gets only 36% of the vote.

In 2005, Blair lost lots of not very marginal seats, but managed to hold on to some of the most marginal.

Nationally, Labour saw a 6% drop in their share of the vote.

In the 25 most marginal Labour-Lib Dem seats, the Liberal Democrats saw an average 6.7% increase in their share of the vote.

There are no obvious signs of vote fraud in Leeds North West, which was not considered particularly marginal, but which was captured by the Liberal Democrats:

Leeds North West

Liberal Democrat 16,612 votes. 37.2% of the vote. +10.3% since the last election..

Labour 14,735 votes. 33.0% of the votes. -8.9% since the last election.

There are no obvious signs of vote fraud in:

Solihull - not considered very marginal, but captured by the Liberal Democrats.

Liberal Democrat 20,896 votes. 39.9% share of the vote. +13.9% since the last election

Conservative 20,617 votes. 39.4% share of the vote. -6.0%

Labour 8,058 15.4% -10.2%

There are no obvious signs of vote fraud in:

Na h-Eileanan an Iar (The Western Isles where people are generally very honest)

SNP 6,213 votes. 44.9% of the votes. +8.0%

Labour 4,772 votes. 34.5% of the votes. -10.5%

In the constituencies which were most marginal, the swing against Labour was smaller than might be expected.

This could be due to a variety of factors, including:

(1) Extra effort by the Labour candidate and his party organisation
(2) tactical voting
(3) possible vote fraud.

In the marginal constituency of Aberdeen South, an investigation was begun into postal voting.

Aberdeen South - marginal

Labour 15,272 votes. 36.7% share of the vote. -1.3%

Liberal Democrat 13,924 votes. 33.5% share of the vote. +4.9%

Aberdeen North - not marginal

Labour 15,557 42.5 -6.8

Liberal Democrat 8,762 23.9 +11.7

Why was the Labour vote down only 1.3% in Aberdeen South, while the Labour vote was down 6.8% in Aberdeen North?

Why was the Liberal vote up only 4.9% in Aberdeen South, while the Liberal vote was up 11.7% in Aberdeen North?

Senior members of the Asian community have been accused of attempting to organise a postal vote racket in Leicester.

Parmjit Singh Gill, the Liberal Democrat MP for Leicester South in the last parliament, believes constituents were put under pressure to register for a postal vote, and then instructed who to vote for.

Leicester South was won by the Liberal Democrats in a previous bi-election.

In the 2005 General Election:
Labour 16,688
Liberal Democrat 12,971

~~~

Dumfries and Galloway - very marginal

Labour 20,924 votes. 41.1% share of the vote. +8.7% since the last election.

Conservative 18,002 35.4 +3.3

Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale - thought to be a relatively safe Labour seat

Conservative 16,141 36.2 +11.4

Labour 14,403 32.3 -4.6

~~~~~

According to the BBC, 10 May 2005, Police in Stoke-on-Trent are investigating claims that postal votes may have been tampered with. The returning officer related that 43 papers for Stoke North arrived together and the declaration of identity had been removed from each.

Stoke on Trent North
Labour 16,191 votes -5.4%
Conservative 6,155 votes +1.2%
Liberal Democrat 4,561 votes +2.9%

~~~~~~~

Which of the following show big swings against Labour?

Which result stands out as very different?

Birmingham Ladywood
Labour 17,262 votes -17.0%
Liberal Democrat 10,461 votes +23.3%

Birmingham Hodge Hill
Labour 13,822 votes -15.3%
Liberal Democrat 8,373 +21.4%

Birmingham Perry Barr
Khalid Mahmood Labour 18,269 +0.5%
Liberal Democrat 10,321 +3.6%

~~~~~

Other examples of very marginal seats where Labour performed better than expected:

Sittingbourne & Sheppey
Labour 17,051 41.8 -4.0%
Conservative 16,972 41.6 +5.1%

Gillingham
Labour 18,621 41.2 -3.3
Conservative 18,367 40.7 +1.6

Selby
Labour 22,623 43.1 -2.0
Conservative 22,156 42.2 +1.4

Ochil and South Perthshire
Labour 14,645 31.4 -2.0
SNP 13,957 29.9 -1.7

Dundee East
SNP 14,708 37.2 +1.1
Labour 14,325 36.2 -1.2

Wirral West
Labour 17,543 42.5 -4.7
Conservative 16,446 39.9 +2.7

Calder Valley
Labour 18,426 38.6 -4.1
Conservative 17,059 35.7 -0.5

Colne Valley
Labour 17,536 35.8 -4.6
Conservative 16,035 32.8 +2.3

Dorset South
Labour 20,231 41.6 -0.4
Conservative 18,419 37.9 -3.7

Vale of Glamorgan
Labour 19,481 41.2 -4.2
Conservative 17,673 37.3 +2.3

~~~~~

http://www.respectcoalition.org/?ite=762

The Respect website gives examples of possible vote fraud in one part of London:

"118 Brick Lane: There are 12 Bengali names registered there. None of whom has ever lived in the building. Polling cards for these names have been removed.

"108 Brick Lane: is tenanted, I understand by Mr (Abdul) Salique, a well-known New Labour supporter. It is clear from our investigation that the 12 people registered on the roll do not live there, while Mr Salique claims that he and his family are resident. This is palpably untrue. We have statements and video evidence from the people who are there. Mr Salique holds a sheaf of polling cards.

"104 Brick Lane: none of the six names registered lives there and the polling cards for these names are missing.

~~~~~

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=5955

US ELECTIONS

Election Day Exit Polls showed that Kerry won both the electoral & popular vote with Kerry getting 51% and Bush 48%.

Early on the morning of 11/3 the mass media continued to show Kerry’s national win - and Kerry's win in Ohio & Florida. CNN’s website 11/3 at 12:21AM showed Kerry’s win in Ohio State.

Officially Bush won the election.

Statisticians & mathematicians were alarmed at the 5.5% discrepancy between his exit polls and the vote count, which was outside the "margin of error".

A report released March 31st by a group of university statisticians stated that it was near impossible in statistical terms for the discrepancy to be so large without the election vote count being suspect.

An Ohio Recount was requested. The areas most suspected of vote fraud were never counted.

One primary method for fraud was vote machines on a "default setting" - so despite voting for Kerry or an entire Democratic Ticket, the machine would flip to a Bush Vote. Some voters tried over & over to change this. Some voters reported the screen finally verified a Kerry vote,but when they got to the end page to reconfirm ballot,it showed Bush.

Some Florida local election officials "were seen throwing away the official vote count tapes for election day, replacing them with new tapes with new vote count numbers".

The study, “Response to Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004 Report”, was co-authored by a group of professors and academicians specializing in statistics and mathematics affiliated with University of Notre Dame, University of Pennsylvania, University of Utah, Cornell University, University of Wisconsin, Southern Methodist University, Case Western Reserve University and Temple University. Their study does not support claims made by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International that exit poll errors were to blame for the unprecedented 5.5% discrepancy between exit polls and official 2004 election results.

According to this analysis by a group of senior statisticians, the new data just released by the exit-pollsters shows that the possibility that the overall vote count was substantially corrupted must be taken seriously. “Now we have statistical evidence that these reports were the tip of a national iceberg. The hypothesis that the discrepancy between the exit polls and election results is due to errors in the official election tally is a coherent theory that must be explored,” said statistician Josh Mitteldorf.

The paper titled "Response to Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004 Report" notes that the Edison/Mitofsky report offers no evidence to support their conclusion that Kerry voters “participated in the exit polls at a higher rate than Bush voters”. In fact, the data provided in the Edison/Mitofsky report suggests that the opposite may have been true: Bush strongholds had slightly higher response rates than Kerry strongholds.

The statisticians note that precincts with hand-counted paper ballots showed no statistical discrepancy between the exit polls and the official results, but for other voting technologies, the overall discrepancy was far larger than the polls’ margin of error.

In one precinct in Ohio, over 4,258 votes were given to Bush where there were only 638 registered voters.

The touch screen machines produce no paper trail.

There is evidence of problems with the "optical scanners" that were used to tabulate the results in many states. When voters fill out paper ballots these ballots were fed into the scanners to total the results. These scanners were manufactured by Diebold & ESS, and have been shown to be easily hacked.