'Shocking complacency' from a group safeguarding elections

Today's report from the Electoral Commission is a bizarre exercise in asking Britain's voters to keep calm and carry on. Its view is that voting fraud is not widespread because almost no one has been prosecuted for it and that even if fraud did occur, it did not have any effect on the outcome of an election. For an organisation that is supposed to safeguard the integrity of our voting system, such complacency is shocking.

Unfortunately, ballot fraud is very easy to do in Britain. But proving it is much harder. Just because police rarely prosecute someone does not mean there are no grounds for an investigation. When I was attacked last year while investigating alleged corruption in East London, I received numerous calls from constituents on all sides of the political divide thanking the newspaper for looking into an issue they felt had been long ignored.

Last year's general election was observed by election monitors from Commonwealth nations like Sierra Leone, Bangladesh and Ghana and even they were shocked by how "corruptible and open to fraud" the British voting system is.