Media

Never mind, Gordon, even when the election looks well and truly lost, there’s always voting fraud…

Is this story the reason why we’ve spent the last 24 hrs hearing smears about poor Gillian Duffy from the Labour-leaning media, rather than reports on Labour’s latest attempt to skew the popular vote?

Labour’s new media tsar Kerry McCarthy today admitted inappropriately revealing a sample of postal votes on Twitter one week before the general election.

‘Inappropriately’, Guardian? Surely you mean illegally? Already with the minimising language… it’s no surprise either that the Guardian’s been pushing the Duffy story to the detriment of all others. Classic diversionary propaganda.

But now the Twitter leak story is out the Guardian is reporting it as though a Labour candidate and senior Prime Ministerial aide’s committal of voting fraud were mere youthful high jinks:

The parliamentary candidate for Bristol East said she was “kicking herself” after posting the results of some 300 votes to her 5,700 followers.

Sure. Like she didn’t know exactly what she was doing. Someone should be kicking her.

What’s more likely is that, if by some unexpected miracle (like, say, election security being breached, enabling Labour to more effectively target election resources) Gordon Brown is able to turn the Titanic away from the iceberg as a result, that McCarthy’ll be rewarded with a sinecure on the Table-Leg Enumeration Agency or some such quango.

After all, it wouldn’t be the first time Labour’s committed election fraud with postal votes, would it?

The 2005 election, and specifically Birmingham 2005, was described by election observers as the dirtiest UK election ever, and that was down to Labour:

Vote-riggers exploited weaknesses in the postal voting system to steal thousands of ballot papers and mark them for Labour, helping the party to take first place in elections to Birmingham City Council.

They believed that their cheating would be hidden for ever in the secrecy of the strong boxes where counted votes are stored, never suspecting that a judge would take the rare step of smashing the seals and tracing the ballots back to the voters. Election corruption has been so rare in the past 100 years that lawyers have struggled to find examples since the late 19th century, when Britain was adjusting to the novelty of universal male suffrage.

The elections last June were the dirtiest since the general election of 1895, when Sir Tankerville Chamberlayne, the Conservative candidate for Southampton, notoriously travelled by cart from pub to pub, waving and throwing sovereigns at the crowds. His election was later ruled invalid.

The Birmingham vote- riggers were more cunning than the flamboyant Sir Tankerville. They coldly exploited communities where many cannot speak English or write their names. They forced what the judge called “dishonest or frightened” postmen into handing over sacks of postal ballots. They seem to have infiltrated the mail service: several voters gave evidence that their ballot papers were altered to support Labour after they put them in the post.

So we don’t know if the postal vote results McCarthy tweeted can be trusted in the first place, given that Labour’s 2010 postal vote fraud effort was well already well underway before she brought Twitter into the equation:

McCarthy’s post, which has now been deleted, said: “First PVs opened in east Bristol, our sample: UKIP **; TUSC**; BNP ** Lib Dem **; Tory **; Labour **. £gameON!”

‘Game on’? How old is she? Certainly past the age of criminal responsibility, and let’s not forget, what she’s committed is a crime, not some silly, girlish error she can simper her way out of. The law is very clear:

An Electoral Commission spokeswoman said candidates who see the front of a ballot paper “must maintain the secrecy of voting”.

The guidelines state: “Anyone attending a postal vote opening session must be provided with a copy of the relevant secrecy requirements.

“They should be reminded of these requirements and of the penalty, on summary conviction, either of a fine of £5,000, or six months’ imprisonment in England and Wales, or one year’s imprisonment in Scotland.”

McCarthy said she had attended a “training exercise” in which staff verified personal identifiers on the postal votes. She said: “I was pretty silly to do it; it was just thoughtless, I was being over-exuberant.

Over-exuberant, my ass.

6 months in jail, eh? That ought to curb her exuberance, you’d think. But I doubt she’ll get it, especially if the miracle happens and the titanic turns. Table legs ahoy!

UPDATE

Maybe she will get the 6 months – her actions have definitely been reported to the police.