Conservative councillor guilty of Slough postal vote fraud » Local Government » 24dash.com

A Conservative politician was today found guilty of using bogus postal votes to ensure he was voted into office.

Eshaq Khan beat Lydia Simmons, an ex-mayor of Slough in Berkshire and a Labour councillor for 23 years, by 119 votes to win the council's Central Ward in last year's local elections.

But a special High Court election court, sitting in Slough, today found Khan and his agents guilty of corrupt and illegal practices in relation to applications for registering to vote and postal voting.

A by-election will now be called in the borough and Khan has been banned by the court from standing again.

Mr Khan and his electoral team were found to have created hundreds of false names in the weeks running up to the May 3 election and entered them on the electoral register for Central Ward.

They then made applications for postal votes for these "ghost voters"
and used the ballots to vote for Mr Khan.

It was only when Labour party activists, surprised by the Conservative victory in an election which has otherwise been a success for Labour, pressed for an investigation that the fraud was discovered.

Mr Khan was expelled from the Conservative Party following today's judgment.

In his judgment, Commissioner Mr Richard Mawry QC said  the introduction of postal voting on demand had made electoral fraud of this type "childishly easy" to commit.

He said: "The only reasons they came to light at all were the incompetence of the fraudsters and the blatant nature of the frauds.

"It would have been pleasant to conclude this judgment by saying that this had now all changed. But I cannot. Despite the 2006 Act, the opportunities for easy and effective electoral fraud remain substantially as they were on April 4, 2005."

After the hearing, Ms Simmons said: "It is one thing to lose an election in a fair fight, but quite another to be cheated out of it."

Responding to the verdict on behalf of the Conservative Party, Bob Neil, shadow minister for local government, said: "Councillor Eshaq Khan's actions were completely unacceptable and he has today been expelled from the Conservative Party.

"There can be no tolerance of people who attempt to corrupt the electoral process.

"This is a problem that affects all parties. As the judgment makes clear there have been similar cases across the political spectrum.

The Conservatives support the Electoral Commissioner's call for tighter laws, including the introduction of individual electoral registration.

"The Government must take heed of the advice in today's judgment and legislate now to ensure that these new laws are introduced before the next general election."

Councillor Rob Anderson, leader of Slough Labour Group, said: "Slough Labour Party has for some time believed that the electoral system in Slough has been exploited. The actions of the Conservative candidate and his team in the last local elections in Slough were disgraceful.

"Labour stands for the honest, decent hard-working resident in Slough.
As soon as we had suspicions that other political parties were not being straight during the elections, we knew it was our duty to retain the public's trust and investigate further.

"Slough Conservatives have brought shame on Slough and shame on their party.

"When we alerted the Tory-backed coalition currently running Slough council and they refused to take action we knew we must do ourselves. We felt we must be able to trust our local elections."

Fiona Mactaggart, Labour MP for Slough said: "I am very pleased that today we have seen our democracy work. It is right that this election should be re-run with only those who are entitled to vote in Central ward actually voting."