THE gravest threat to the integrity of postal voting comes from two pending trials into alleged “massive organised electoral fraud” in Britain’s biggest local authority.

Across the country yesterday, police said they were still looking into claims of irregularities in the June 10 European and local polls.

Voters in the North of England told a Times investigation during the campaign that they were too intimidated to complain to the authorities about being bullied into supporting certain candidates.

Birmingham has become the test case for the future of postal voting. Although the city was excluded from the postal-only experiment, the council saw a surge in applications for postal votes from 24,000 to 70,000.

The High Court has appointed Richard Mawrey, QC, a deputy judge, as Election Commissioner to examine petitions seeking to overthrow results in Bordesley Green and Aston wards. Two ten-day trials, without juries, will be held in Birmingham from February to March. The Director of Public Prosecutions has been invited to take part.

In Hull, which experimented with all-postal voting, the High Court has already declared one result void after scores of householders were sent ballot papers for the wrong ward.

Cheshire Constabulary has sent a file to the Crown Prosecution Service after the arrest of the Mayor of Halton, Pat Tyrrell, from Runcorn. Allegations are being studied against four people of personation, an offence against the Pilots Act 2004, which governed the all-postal experiment, and forgery. Greater Manchester Police is about to send a file to the CPS after the arrest of three men in Oldham, where activists allegedly completed voters’ ballot papers.

West Yorkshire Police said its investigation into alleged irregularities in the Barkerend area of Bradford is continuing. Lancashire Constabulary has been investigating a surge of applications for postal proxy votes in Burnley.

Fatima Patwa, solicitor for the petitioners in Bordesley Green, Birmingham, claimed that the People’s Justice Party had been ahead at the count when boxes of postal ballots mysteriously appeared. “Every single vote in those three boxes was for Labour,” she said, “and all in the same ink.”

After claims of mass forgery in Aston, every application for a postal vote and every ballot is being checked to see if the signatures match. Ayoub Khan, a defeated Liberal Democrat candidate, claimed that 182 votes had been witnessed by a single individual using 50 different names and 80 bogus addresses.

The alleged cheat is known as “Mystery A” because of his distinctive way of writing the letter. A handwriting expert will be consulted.

Since the High Court ordered the Birmingham trials to go ahead, Mr Khan says he has received telephone death threats.

Labour has said that the Birmingham petitions from the Liberal Democrats and pro-Kashmir People’s Justice Party involved “wild allegations” and a “scattergun approach”.

The petition for Aston alleges: “Post boxes containing a number of ballots were set alight to invalidate the votes.

“Threats of deportation were made by Labour supporters to first-generation migrants if they did not sign postal vote papers to vote Labour.

“Attempts were made by Labour supporters in Bordesley Green to bribe a postman and he was threatened with having his throat cut,” the petition continues. Labour activists stole postal votes from addresses. Children were paid to collect postal votes that were sticking out of people’s doors.”

WHAT WE FOUND

Investigations by The Times into all-postal voting in June found:

• A national Labour Party document urged activists to set up bogus ballot boxes outside traditional polling stations in all-postal-voting areas
  
  
• A Pakistani woman said management at her husband’s workplace in Burnley insisted that all employees prove they vote Labour or be sacked
  
  
• A Bangladeshi mother in Oldham said: “People are forcing you to vote. You don’t have a choice”
  
  
• A council worker in Bradford said that his mother-in-law had unwittingly handed three blank ballot papers to a caller at her house
  
  
• A young husband in Bradford said that party canvassers told him: “You give the ballot paper to us and we will vote for you”
  
  
• Voters complained that all three main parties were involved in postal-vote cheating

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