Police are investigating allegedly burned ballots while voter fraud questions are being raised over the result of the Peterborough by-election (special election) in the United Kingdom last week.
A local Labour Party campaigner previously convicted of electoral fraud was present throughout the campaign and, critically, at the official election count.
The result – declared late Thursday night – saw Nigel Farage's Brexit Party denied its first seat in parliament by just 683 votes.
Long time Labour Party activist Tariq Mahmood – convicted in 2008 for a vote fabrication scheme – was "front and centre" of the party's efforts to mobilize the growing Muslim vote in the city, according to local officials.
"Tariq Mahmood is a villain and he was front and centre of the Labour campaign within the Muslim community." – Wayne Fitzgerald
MAHMOOD
Tariq Mahmood is a well-known local Labour Party activist, finding most of his fame due to his electoral fraud conviction and his racist remarks about Conservative Party Member of Parliament Sajid Javid.
The lettings agency boss branded Javid – now running for leadership of the Conservative Party – a "coconut", a well-known racial slur in South Asian communities. The insult is the equivalent of the phrase "house negro", especially used by hard-line Muslims against moderates, or apostates.
[caption id="attachment_178267" align="alignnone" width="1908"]
Mahood with Corbyn and Forbes (left) and at the election count (right).[/caption]
Mahmood admitted to campaigning for the Labour Party during the recent election despite his previous conviction. He was pictured with the Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn as well as the party's winning candidate Lisa Forbes on several occasions. Despite numerous pictures uploaded to his Facebook page over several weeks, Mahmood claims he only "met Jeremy Corbyn once".
The deputy leader of Peterborough Council Wayne Fitzgerald said this weekend "Tariq Mahmood is a villain and he was front and centre of the Labour campaign within the Muslim community.
"We receive repeated reports of postal fraud and personation within the largely urban central parts of the city where the Labour vote is strongest."
A former Member of Parliament for the area, Stewart Jackson, added: "Tariq Mahmood should not be involved in politics at all. He has a record for voter fraud and the fact that he is so close to the Labour campaign speaks volumes about the rottenness of the current Labour Party."
POSTAL VOTES
Postal voting fraud concerns are rife in the United Kingdom, which like the U.S., currently has no widespread voter identification laws.
The Peterborough Council website states: "Postal voting is now available in England, Scotland and Wales on request, for all elections. You do not need to give any reason for wanting a postal vote."
There were 9,898 postal votes cast at the election, with 400 rejected of a total 33,920 votes.
The relatively new introduction of the scheme has been leveraged at an industrial scale by the Labour Party for years. The Guardian notes postal voting as the third top reason for Labour beating the Brexit Party last week. The left-wing New Statesman even gloated about the matter, with Stephen Bush writing:
The Brexit Party didn’t have the time to find its most committed voters, let alone get them onto postal votes, and would have been unable to even attempt to persuade and convert the voters who had long since voted for its opponents by post.
Turnout was especially high for postal votes at the recent by-election, with 69.4 per cent being returned versus an in-person turnout of just 48.4 per cent.
There were 9,898 postal votes cast at the election, with 400 rejected of a total 33,920 votes.
[caption id="attachment_178268" align="aligncenter" width="640"]
Mark Hillary (Flickr)[/caption]
Hundreds of electoral fraud cases have been reported in the United Kingdom in the past two years, with postal voting making up a significant portion of the claims. In most instances, those suspected of the practice are cautioned, or no further action is taken.
Judge Richard Mawrey QC, who has presided over some of the most heinous cases of election fraud in the country, noted in an interview with the BBC: "Postal voting on demand, however many safeguards you build into it, is wide open to fraud. And it's open to fraud on a scale that will make election rigging a possibility and indeed in some areas a probability."
MUSLIM COMMUNITIES
Britain's South Asian and Muslim communities appear to be the most prevalent when it comes to targeted postal voting and the campaigns surrounding them. Almost always by the Labour Party or Labour-affiliated politicians.
The London borough of Tower Hamlets underwent a major investigation after it was revealed Mayor Lutfur Rahman had been "personally guilty" of "corrupt or illegal practices, or both".
Rahman – who was banned from public office for five years – was found guilty of a plethora of illegal campaign activity, including: "the candidate’s agents are found to have been guilty of personation under S60 or of postal vote fraud under S62A".
The judgement against him also drew attention to cases in Birmingham in England, which also has densely populated Muslim areas.
"I reported that the wholesale falsification of postal votes had not been confined to the wards of Aston and Bordesley Green, the subject of the Petitions, but had been widespread in those wards of Birmingham where the Labour Party was attempting to counteract the collapse of the Labour vote in the Muslim Asian community following the invasion of Iraq in 2003."
Sir Eric Pickles – who led a government report into the matter – concluded in 2016 that matters of electoral fraud were being ignored or unchallenged due to concerns about political correctness and the fear of targeting Muslim communities.
[caption id="attachment_178269" align="alignnone" width="5760"]
Lutfur Rahman (CC)[/caption]
He wrote at the time:
“Abuses of postal voting on demand were noted too often be carried out in communities where an individual’s right to vote in secret and exercise free choice may not be fully valued. Evidence was presented of pressure being put on vulnerable members of some ethnic minority communities, particularly women and young people, to vote according to the will of the elders, especially in communities of Pakistani and Bangladeshi background.
Sir Eric added: "There were concerns that influence and intimidation within households may not be reported, and that state institutions had turned a blind eye to such behaviour because of 'politically correct' over-sensitivities about ethnicity and religion."
While still predominantly British and Christian, Peterborough's demographics have shifted considerably over the past few decades.
“She [Forbes] got nominated [elected] because 3 people including me burned over a [sic] 1000 votes for TBP [The Brexit Party], and laughed while doing it” wrote Roddis.
The city of around 200,000 people now had a 10 per cent Muslim population at the last census in 2011.
Peterborough councillor Amjad Iqbal said after the result: “I would say the Muslim vote played a vital role in Lisa Forbes’s success”.
BURNING BALLOTS
Postal voting and Labour's targeting of South Asian communities aren't the only queries being raised about the Peterborough result, however.
Cambridgeshire Police are currently investigating two serious allegations of electoral fraud, one stemming from a social media post which claimed the user had "burned more than 1,000 votes for the Brexit Party".
According to the Politicalite website and confirmed by local police a man by the name of Alan Roddis posted in a closed social media group called ‘Peterborough Politics’ about burning Brexit Party ballots.
“She [Forbes] got nominated [elected] because 3 people including me burned over a [sic] 1000 votes for TBP [The Brexit Party], and laughed while doing it” wrote Roddis.
[caption id="attachment_178271" align="aligncenter" width="405"]
Screengrab from the Peterborough Politics group[/caption]
Police are now said to be investigating the claim, though Peterborough Council maintains there is currently "no evidence" of wrongdoing. A petition to investigate the election result now has over 25,000 signatures.
Sources within the Brexit Party have told Human Events a challenge to the election result is being seriously considered, with lawyers already looking into the matters.
The party has 21 days after the announced results to formally challenge the result in court.
With a wafer-thin majority of just under 700 votes, it is a consideration not without merit.
Raheem Kassam is the Global Editor-in-Chief of HumanEvents.com
