Nah, there's definitely no “family voting” or intimidation or any other corrupt practices affecting & skewing our fantastic, wonderful, rigorous & robust voting system that cannot be tampered with. 🤣G Southwell 20/6/26 - “The increased questioning of the integrity of postal voting, without any evidence being presented that there are any significant problems,................ postal voting is being smeared in every democracy and, what concerned nobody previously, becomes amplified by useful idiocy on social media. This thread provides a good example of how a falsehood, if repeated often enough and appealing to a person's existing prejudices, can be accepted as an absolute fact by some. …..............We may be at the foothills of this attempt to chip away at confidence in the democratic process …..”Only a fool would deny we don't have a problem with the integrity of our voting system and that we need to address it immediately.===========================================================As the elections watchdog is urged to investigate illegal ‘family voting’... It saddens me to say it, but the only way we can safeguard our precious democracy is to have police officers at every polling station.By MATT GOODWIN Published: 22:00, 22 August 2026 Updated: 00:02, 23 August 2026When I was campaigning in the run-up to the Gorton and Denton by-election in February, it became blatantly obvious to me that dark and sinister forces were at work.It wasn’t just the intimidating atmosphere out on the streets of Manchester where I went door-to-door canvassing as the prospective parliamentary candidate for Reform UK under the menacing gaze of groups of mainly young Muslim men.Or even the rumours of under-hand deals being struck between other political parties and local so-called community elders.Far more disturbing was what my colleagues and I witnessed at the polling stations.I’m talking about husbands and fathers standing by voting booths, instructing their wives and adult children exactly where to put their mark on the ballot paper. In many cases these coercive patriarchs might as well have had the pen in their own hands.So while new and deeply disturbing revelations of widespread and illicit ‘family voting’ in Birmingham during May’s local elections will leave many Britons appalled, they come as no shock to me.As revealed by the Daily Mail in a damning report yesterday, at recent elections Birmingham City Council staff witnessed attempts to get round the secret ballot at no fewer than 50 of its polling stations.Beleaguered electoral officers had to repeatedly tell voters it was against the law to enter a booth with a relative and tell them how to vote. Others witnessed one man trying to influence voting through ‘Islamic gestures, blinking eyes, hand signals’, and another clutching ‘all the poll cards’ for his family and ‘advising’ each on how to vote.You’d think it would go without saying that voters colluding or conferring or advising each other on voting is illegal under the 2023 Ballot Secrecy Act.But these were exactly the kind of illegal practices I warned about six months ago in Manchester, where it emerged after the polls closed that ‘family voting’ took place in 68 per cent of polling stations in Gorton and Denton.Back then, my attempts to red-flag the insidious creep of these unlawful voting practices fell on deaf ears. I was simply accused of sour grapes after coming second to Hannah Spencer, who is now the constituency’s Green Party MP.But, as I said at the time, what is going on is nothing less than an assault on, not just our democracy, but Britain itself. We are facing a major problem in this country, one which threatens to strike at the heart of everything we hold dear. It’s time to wake up and act.And I’m not alone in issuing this urgent clarion call. The official – and independent – election observer group Democracy Volunteers said it witnessed 291 potential breaches of the secret ballot across the UK at the May elections.In February, at the Gorton and Denton by-election, this impartial group said it witnessed the highest amount of ‘family voting’ in its ten-year history, at 15 out of the 22 polling stations at which they had observers across the constituency. They were so alarmed, they took the rare step of publishing their findings as soon as the polls closed.In February, Greater Manchester Police took no action after saying it found ‘no evidence’ of the law being broken.It has since launched an investigation into alleged offences during the May local elections in Tameside, a Manchester metropolitan borough, amid concerns about how candidates were put forward and represented in the ward. Six arrests have been made.It is no longer plausible to deny that we have a serious problem with British democracy being hijacked by sectarianism, with voters in some areas of the country putting their allegiance to a particular religion, tribe or clan, ahead of their loyalty to this country. In ten of the 14 wards that make up the Gorton and Denton seat, more than one in five people was born overseas. In one area, Longsight, close to half the population are foreign-born.You can bet that if this is happening in Manchester and Birmingham then it will also be going on in Bradford, in Oldham, in Blackburn and in London, entire cities where elections are being rigged along sectarian lines.On some nights while canvassing local voters in Gorton and Denton, I walked along streets where not a single person could speak English and where people living in homes did not match official records. Community pressures, and the spectre of family voting, in these areas were plain to see.My early warnings may have been ignored but the fact that Democracy Volunteers raised the alarm and Greater Manchester Police have made arrests is evidence of this national crisis.We are never going to save Britain if we don’t first safeguard our precious democracy. To do that, I believe the Government urgently needs to take three steps.The first is to dramatically restrict postal voting.It was Tony Blair who opened up the system to anyone who wanted to vote by post back in 2001, in the cynical belief that it would garner more votes for Labour. In doing so, he ignored warnings at the time from a High Court judge that it was ‘wide open to fraud’ and opened up our democracy to all kinds of insidious influences.For years, there has been disturbing evidence that this is being used to game the system, allowing particular minority communities to engage in block voting away from the watchful eye of independent observers in polling stations.To stamp out this practice, future postal votes should be restricted, as they once were, to those who genuinely need them, such as people serving abroad in the military and those who, due to disability, are physically unable to get to a polling station.Secondly, we need to bring about an end to Commonwealth voting rights. Around 1.7million people from countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica and India – who, despite the fact that they are not even British citizens, have the right to vote at British elections – have, according to the Office for National Statistics, registered to do so. It is a practice which most right-minded people would regard as absurd.Finally, we need to take steps to ensure that what I and others witnessed in Gorton and Denton, and what has now been uncovered in Birmingham, cannot happen in the future. It saddens me to say this but if, as a democracy, that means we have to have police in every polling station standing alongside independent observers then so be it.If we fail to act, then entire areas of the UK will fall under the influence of networks built around religious and clan identities.We need political leaders in Westminster to stamp this out now; to defend our ancient liberties and keep a grip on one of the great pillars of our national life.British democracy is a cherished part of who we are. It’s time to push back before it’s too late.https://www.dailymail.com/debate/article-16072601/only-way-safeguard-democracy-police-polls-MATTHEW-GOODWIN.html
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