Almost nothing else matters. Not as urgently, anyway. Yesterday's exhaustive 100-page report from the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust ought to put every minister, editor, campaigner and citizen on red alert. For it is about democracy, and from democracy flows government, whose actions affect everything that keeps us safe: law, security, policing, prosperity, fair dealing, relations with the world. When rot affects the democratic process the ship of state has a hole in its hull. It is an emergency.

And rot there is: largely unheeded. As the report remarks with deadly blandness: “Outside of ministerial circles, there is a widespread view that a fundamental overhaul of UK electoral law, administration and policy is urgently required.” Just read those first four words again.

The report is called Purity of Elections in the UK: Causes for Concern. It traces how the mechanics of British elections have been neglected and then vacuously tampered with, until public confidence in the process is the lowest in Western Europe. Any day now they will send in UN observers to check us out. Possibly from Nicaragua or Nigeria. Or Florida.

The cause is partly systemic, with our failure to have fixed terms of office, which gives advantage to the incumbent, and our tolerance of heavy spending on marginal seats, which benefits the richest. But largely the crisis is the result of “reforms” swept in by new Labour without caution, reflection or wariness of human nature. Postal voting “on demand” was cavalierly introduced for the first elections of the millennium, though, as the report dryly observes, the claimed benefit of increased turnout and social inclusion has been greatly exaggerated. It also says that “the likelihood of fraud occurring could - and should - have been predicted on the basis of evidence of growing proxy vote fraud during the 1990s”. Had there been a snap election last year, the postal dispute and backlog would also have disenfranchised several million.

Postal voting has been a disaster. High-profile frauds have been prosecuted in Peterborough, Birmingham and Lancashire, but are probably the tip of an iceberg. Don't listen to me if you doubt it - listen to the judges who waded through the evidence. Richard Mawrey, QC, observed in the Aston and Bordersley Green frauds that the level of cheating “would disgrace a banana republic” and said that fraud will continue unabated and be “lethal to the democratic process”. Roll-stuffing - creating imaginary people by filling in the form that comes through the door - “is childishly simple to commit and very difficult to detect. To ignore the probability that it is widespread, particularly in local elections, is a policy that even an ostrich would despise”.

Officialdom, he says, shows “not simply complacency but denial”. Indeed: government spokesmen just say that “appropriate safeguards” are in place. They clearly aren't.

Postal voting fraud is even worse than roll-stuffing, because real people are denied their voice. Government says postal voting is “more convenient”. You betcha. It is convenient for patriarchs and “community leaders”, bullies who gather up the votes of weaker members of their group and deliver them to the desired candidate. The report carefully points out that cheating is not exclusive to any one party or social group, but admits that in the “biraderi” system among some British Asians the practice of mutual support creates a village politics culture: “Extended family and kinship networks are mobilised to secure the support of up to several hundred electors.”

It is obviously important not to demonise ethnic minorities; nor is this the only problem. Inaccuracies, inefficiencies, inequities are mercilessly skewered in the report. Nonetheless, it is a dismaying reflection that in modern Britain thousands of women, young people and new citizens can have their votes compelled as surely as if they were at gunpoint in Zimbabwe. Only 46 per cent of British Asians regard postal voting as safe. When there was a parallel concern in sectarian Northern Ireland, postal votes were limited to those who could prove genuine inability to get to a polling booth; moreover, to prevent roll-stuffing, each voter registers individually. With a photo and national insurance number. Not just on a list written by the family boss.

The voting booth was once a sacred spot. As Tony Benn always says, election day is a great day because only then is every one of us equal in power. The stub of pencil on a string, the mangy curtain, the tin box - these things spelt freedom of thought. You could vote or spoil your paper in privacy. It wasn't perfect - we know now what a mess the electoral registers are in. We also know the tricks and bribes that sway marginals; that's been going on for ever - think of 1966 when, with a majority of two, a desperate Harold Wilson sent Barbara Castle to Humberside to promise them a bridge. But it took the Blair Government's half-baked mania for innovation to offer postal votes on demand without a thought about the result.

The Universal Declaration on Human Rights stipulates “universal and equal suffrage, held by secret vote guaranteeing the free expression of the will of the elector”. The Rowntree report should be death to postal voting on demand. Now. Turnout might go down a bit, but turnout matters less than integrity. Those who do walk to the booth must know absolutely that, on this day, their vote counts no more and no less than anybody else's. Too late for Thursday: not too late for the 2009 election.

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