Welcome to the banana republic of Blackburn, the northern town where, according to one parliamentary candidate, citizens’ votes are no longer their own.

This week Craig Murray, a former diplomat hoping to become the local MP, will be writing to the Electoral Commission to raise his fears of vote-rigging in the constituency. The soaring numbers of people voting by post, he said, are leaving the election wide open to fraud.

“I’ve been approached by several people in the Asian community who are under huge pressure from Labour activists to apply for a postal vote rather than a ballot vote and then hand their postal vote over to the Labour party,” he said.

“That is happening now in Blackburn on a wide scale. In my career as a diplomat I’ve been used to precisely this situation abroad but wasn’t expecting to face it in the UK.”

In Blackburn the contest is particularly tense. The sitting MP is Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, and the local Muslim community is threatening to vote him out in protest over the Iraq war.

In its efforts to hang on to every vote it can, Labour is urging people to register for postal votes; already 50% more people than in 2001 will be using the system in Blackburn this time. Many of them, claimed Murray, are facing pressure or even threats of “repercussions” intended to influence who they support.

The allegations in Blackburn are by no means isolated. The British electoral system, once the envy of the world, is under unprecedented fire. Last week, a special election judge said that Britain’s postal voting system would “disgrace a banana republic”, describing it as “farcical . . . hopelessly insecure . . . (it) contains no effective safeguards and is an invitation to fraud”.

He spoke after six people in Birmingham were found guilty of voting fraud in last year’s local elections. The judge identified 15 types of fraud involving thousands of votes in favour of Labour.

On Friday a former Labour councillor in Blackburn was jailed for more than three years after admitting voterigging. The police are also conducting investigations in Woking, Burnley, Reading, Peterborough, Oldham, Bradford and Halton.

Critics blame the scandal on Labour’s changes to the system, which now allows anyone to ask for a postal vote. Thrown on the defensive last week Tony Blair insisted: “Overall, the postal voting system is no more prone to fraud than other electoral systems.”

But an investigation by The Sunday Times has revealed that last year senior government ministers were warned of the dangers of fraud. They felt so concerned that a bill was planned to tighten up postal voting — yet it was quietly ditched before it even reached parliament.

At the same time the Labour party machine has argued against tightening postal voting security because it feared Labour supporters in particular would fail to turn out at polling stations. Not surprisingly, critics accuse Blair of ignoring clear warnings about fraud for party political gain.

“I warned that postal voting would lead to cash-and-carry democracy,” said Marsha Singh, Labour MP for Bradford West. “The government says it will increase voter turnout, but with it we are sacrificing the sacrosanct principle of democracy, which is the secret ballot.”

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