Police to supervise Birmingham vote

The police have been called in to supervise voting in some areas of Birmingham on Thursday amid fears of fraud in the local elections.

City council leader and Conservative councillor Mike Whitby said the involvement of officers would be decided on a case-by-case basis, but insisted it was necessary to restore public confidence.

The step would ensure local elections were "free, fair and clear of any illegal or corrupt practices", he said, adding: "Honest law-abiding voters have nothing to fear on Thursday and a police presence at vulnerable polling stations will ensure that."

Birmingham was a centre for electoral fraud in 2004 – the local commissioner said vote-rigging there would "disgrace a banana republic" – and the problem is now becoming a major political issue as the parties approach their last 24 hours of campaigning.

Mr Whitby's move was welcomed by the Liberal Democrats on the council – the two parties form the ruling coalition – with deputy group leader Tariq Khan saying it was a "reasonable and sensible" measure.

However, head of the Labour group Albert Bore condemned the announcement as "electioneering" and said his party had offered an alternative way of improving security weeks ago that would have made such actions unnecessary.

All candidates are governed by the voluntary code of conduct, but Labour – who had six councillors ejected from the council last summer after they were found guilty of electoral fraud – proposed three changes to make it more secure.

These included having a witness declaration on the back of applications for a postal vote, having a 'no touch, no visit' policy where candidates could not enter a house where a postal ballot had been applied for, and limiting the number of people at polling stations.

"This is a bit of electioneering – they could have put these [plans] in place weeks ago," Sir Albert told politics.co.uk.

However, Cllr Khan rejected this suggestion outright, saying the proposals had only been introduced three weeks before – an "absolutely stupid" timescale – and warned that he suspected not all Labour candidates were complying with the rules anyway.

And he said he "totally agreed" with Cllr Whitby's call for police officers to attend certain wards "where there has been controversy" – most likely Aston and Bordesley Green, where the six counts of fraud were discovered two years ago.

Questioned about the arrest of a Liberal Democrat candidate last week over allegations of voter fraud, however, he insisted it was a "stitch-up" and defended the party's decision not to remove the person involved from the candidate list.

They were innocent until proven guilty, Cllr Khan said – before warning that he too had allegations of voter fraud, but would not make them public, or declare them to the Electoral Commission, until after Thursday's polls.

"I think the police have better things to do," he said.

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