Voter ID

Tom Randall Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Tom Randall (Gedling) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary, and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher), who is my predecessor as chairman of the Poplar and Limehouse Conservative Association. I agree with everything he has said, particularly his generous remarks about Councillor Peter Golds and his campaign against electoral corruption.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) on securing the debate. We sit alongside each other in the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, and I often agree with everything she says in that Select Committee. Regrettably, I will disagree with almost everything she has said this afternoon.

The hon. Lady says that this is a problem that does not exist. How does she know? To answer that question, perhaps it would be helpful to have a potted history on how to commit electoral fraud. There is a marked register that sets out who has voted and who has not. In the case of council elections, it is very easy to tell, with a little bit of research, who the 50%, 60% and in some areas up to 70% of people are who do not habitually vote in council elections. Once someone is armed with that name and an address, they can go to the local polling station and give that name and address. Unlike at Labour party meetings, there is no ID—they just need to give that name and address to the clerk at the polling station and they will be handed that voter’s ballot paper.

If someone lives in a town or small village, the clerk might recognise that the name and face do not match up, but if they live in a crowded urban area—take Tower Hamlets, as a random example—where people do not know each other and do not know their neighbours, the ballot paper will be handed over with no questions asked. If someone were to do this perhaps later on in the evening, at 8 or 9 o’clock, when most people who were going to vote had voted, they would be able to do that successfully, and they might, in an urban area, be able to go around a few polling districts, if they have really done their homework, and vote several times for several people, before the close of poll at 10 o’clock.

Throughout the whole of this process, this is perhaps the most unique fraud of all. It is a fraud in which the victim does not know that they are a victim of fraud. If someone has decided not to vote in an election, they will not go out to check the marked register—if they even know what the marked register is, which most people do not. They will not go out to check that they have not voted in an election in which they have decided not to vote.

If a victim of electoral fraud does not know that they are a victim of electoral fraud, how does the hon. Member for Luton South know? I have not had an answer to that so far. However, this debate has a little while more to run, so I look forward to being enlightened on that point.