A JUDGE declared yesterday that Britain’s electoral system is now an “open invitation to fraud”.

The crisis engulfing the postal voting system risks provoking a spate of legal challenges in narrowly won seats after polling day.

The Government, which has consistently defended the postal vote system, changed the law in 2000 to make voting easier and to help to boost turnout. But the changes also make it much easier for ballot papers to be filled out fraudulently and to be sent to the same address.

The Electoral Reform Society called for urgent legal safeguards including individual registration after Richard Mawrey, QC, the election commissioner presiding over hearings into alleged electoral fraud in Birmingham, condemned the postal voting system.

“Even if I came to the conclusion that the respondents in both cases were entirely innocent, I would not neglect to point out that the law as it stands at the moment is an open invitation to fraud,” the judge said yesterday. “It seems to me that I could not come to any other conclusion, given the material that we have before this court with this case. Someone who was so inclined could defraud the system.”

He gave warning that he would deliver his judgment “unless prevented by forces beyond my control” on April 4, which will be an embarrassment to the Prime Minister, because it is the day he is expected to go to Buckingham Palace and call an election.

The Liberal Democrats called yesterday for emergency measures to guard against fraud at the election. “Ministers must make a statement to the House of Commons to avoid chaos during the general election,” Ed Davey, the Lib Dems spokesman for local government, said.

“We will need the Election Commission to provide independent monitoring of how postal voting operates and it is going to be vital for postal votes to be counted separately so monitors can detect whether systematic fraud has taken place.”

The first election court to investigate corruption for more than a century has heard four weeks of allegations of what were described by Ravi Sukul, the petitioners’ counsel, as “widespread and naked cheating”. Hundreds of voters are said to have had their ballots stolen by Labour and Liberal Democrat vote-riggers in last year’s elections in Birmingham. All the accused deny wrong- doing. The judge is hearing petitions calling for the overthrow of six Labour councillors in two wards in Birmingham.

A spokesman for the Electoral Reform Society said yesterday that, whatever the outcome, the judge’s ruling on April 4 could lead to a spate of challenges at the general election. “Everyone will be looking more closely at election results with a view to challenging them if they are tightly fought,” the spokesman said.

“Whether a future judge is likely to decide a case on what Richard Mawrey said is another thing. But people will no longer get away with saying this (fraud) could not happen in the UK.” Both the Liberal Democrats and the Electoral Reform Society support individual registration but the Government has said that this could reduce voters by 1.5 million.

A report from the Commons Committee on the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Department for Constititional Affairs is expected to call today for more safeguards against fraud while encouraging voter participation.

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