Issues with mail-in voting are already undermining Britain’s July 4 snap election. Royal Mail failures have resulted in many voters not receiving their ballots on time in over 90 constituencies (electoral districts).
Anas Sarwar, who leads the Labour Party in Scotland, complains, “One person disenfranchised is one person too many.” He notes “several cases… of people who have left to go on holiday and didn’t receive their postal votes on time.”
John Swinney, the First Minister of Scotland and leader of the left-separatist Scottish National Party (SNP), is complaining that the debacle could affect the election results.
Mail-in or postal voting in Britain was previously restricted to people with disabilities, soldiers serving overseas, and other select groups. However, the previous Labour government introduced postal voting for any voter on demand. Fraud has been plaguing British elections ever since.
In 2005, a major fraud scheme involving Muslim Labour candidates saw the courts overturn municipal elections in Birmingham, England’s second city. Ordinary citizens brought a case to court after the elections regulator and the police failed to intervene, exposing a scheme involving corrupt mailmen, child ballot thieves, a warehouse described as an “electoral fraud factory” where ballots were altered, and bags of ballots arriving late to counts.
Judge Richard Mawrey KC ruled the then-Labour government was presiding over “electoral fraud that would disgrace a banana republic.” He would later warn mail-in voting in the U.S. is subject to even greater abuse ahead of the 2020 election.
Conservative governments have made no meaningful changes to mail-in voting security. However, in-person voting now requires photo ID.
July 4 will be the first general election to require ID—and possibly the last. Labour, likely to win comfortably, are signaling they will abolish it.
