The secret ballot has been the foundation stone of British democracy for more than a century. Gladstone introduced the measure in 1872 to protect newly enfranchised working-class men from landlords or employers who might seek to coerce their vote. The Government’s haste to abolish the secret ballot for tomorrow’s local and European elections — by introducing compulsory postal voting in certain parts of the country — seems to have plunged some vulnerable communities right back into the skulduggery of the 19th century. As The Times reports today, the well-publicised failures of some councils to send ballots out on time are as nothing compared with the allegations of significant corruption in the North West. An important experiment for democracy has been seriously mishandled.

Election fraud is nothing new in Britain. Eleven men were convicted of vote-rigging in Oldham in 2001. But the pressure being exerted in some Asian communities, reported to The Times, seems to be on a different scale altogether. Police have mounted extra patrols in Bradford after receiving complaints that thugs were forcing people to hand over blank ballots on the doorstep. From Oldham to Brierfield, Lancashire, householders have told our reporter of their fury that people claiming to represent all three of the main parties are demanding their blank ballots with menaces or trickery.

Such behaviour is peculiarly distasteful in that almost all its victims seem to be Muslims. Many of these individuals thought that they had found in Britain a refuge from some of the worst excesses of feudalism in their homelands. Their frustration at being prevented from casting their vote in the privacy of the polling station, away from family or clan loyalties, is palpable. While many younger Muslims seem to be standing up for their right to vote, older people are more vulnerable. Women who barely speak English are apparently being told that party representative has come to collect “the envelopes for the mosque”. They are handing over their democratic rights with their ballot papers.

This situation was predictable. Ministers have either been astonishingly naive, or deliberately deaf to repeated warnings from Asian communities themselves. Bradford council voted unaminously last year to ask the Electoral Commission not to include the Yorkshire and Humber area in its experiment. Lord Greaves, a Liberal Democrat, has for months been raising the spectre of “people walking down the street with fists full of postal voting papers belonging to other people” in the North West towns which have already been accused of fraud in previous elections. His reward has been to suffer accusations of racism in local Labour Party election material. Yet his comments seem to have been close to the mark.

Chris Leslie, Minister for Constitutional Affairs, whose constituency overlaps with Bradford Metropolitan District, cannot have been unaware of these concerns. Yet the goal of raising turnout seems to have trumped any proper planning or consideration. The Government insisted, against the commission’s advice, on running a gigantic pilot which affects 14 million voters. Its Representation of the People Act 2000 allows voters to obtain postal ballots without giving any special reason, although this can only have made abuse easier.

The Conservatives have suggested that they may seek a judicial review of the whole process. But it will be difficult to prove fraud if people are too scared to speak out. This weekend it may well transpire that turnout has increased. However, this will not prove the worth of a system which makes it impossible to know how many votes were genuine. It is hard not to conclude that postal voting is in danger of being a dead letter.