Cllr Shahed Ali, Tower Hamlets council’s cabinet member for the ‘clean and green’ (ie street cleaning and refuse etc), was yesterday arrested on suspicion of multiple voting in May’s elections.
He was arrested early in the morning and asked to explain how two votes were cast in his name earlier this year.
It’s understood he was registered to vote at two different addresses.
A source close to Shahed said he voted just once in person and that was it. The source said the police investigation centres on the ballot cast from the second address.
He is said to be helping police solve the riddle, and strenuously denies any wrongdoing.
He is a member of Lutfur Rahman’s Tower Hamlets First party, having been expelled from Labour for having backed the Mayor in 2010.
He has been ward member for Whitechapel since 2006 when he was first elected for Respect.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said a 44 year old man had been arrested on suspicion of multiple voting yesterday.
Let me stress that Shahed has not been charged. My source said he wouldn’t be making any comment on the issue for fear of jeopardising the police investigation.
Trial by Jeory 
Very few people are permitted by English law to register to vote at multiple (usually 2) different addresses. However they are permitted by law to vote just ONCE.
For example, multiple registrations is available to students away from home. Usually once at the home address and once at the student accommodation address.
Oh Golly, it can’t get any worse, can it ?
Curious Cat.
Actually, I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a LOT more to come, and I sincerely hope that things get significantly worse.
Tim
@CuriousCat. The advice on LBTH site isn’t as prescriptive as that. It implies (to me) that if you own more than one property, you may register more than once. However, totally agree that you may vote only once in the same election.
It may be that you can be registered to vote by someone else, of course.
That’s true Ted but surely ignorance is not a defence? If I was registering someone to vote … I’d check it with them. They’d KNOW they had been registered by me. Unless of course it’s that curious amnesia/denial virus going around…
Fancy Maurice referring to Due Diligence in a place like Tower Hamlets.
Currently the Head of The Household enters the details onto the form of ALL those eligible people currently LIVING THERE.
A false declaration is an offence pursuant to the Perjury Act.
Don’t forget, somehow 2 votes were identified to having been cast by the same person. The double registration is now a minor issue compared to the double voting. The police are usually too lazy and/or indifferent to get involved. The arrest strongly suggests the police are taking the matter gravely seriously.
Curious Cat.
That’s not correct. If you live at more than one address, you may register to vote at more than one address. Ownership has nothing to do with it
=> Island Dweller,
LBTH is not the law and neither is it a Court of Law.
I successfully argued the point you mentioned at a local authority that sometimes seems “twinned” with TH. A councillor thought he could register to vote both at his business premises and at his home. He couldn’t and his business address registration was cancelled. The police could have prosecuted him for perjury in respect of his unlawful application, but didn’t..
Although the English voting system is deeply flawed and at times undemocratic and a contradiction to the Human Right of Free & Fair Elections, one registration only unless exempt from that restriction by case or statute law.
If one owns 5 homes, all in the same electoral area, does one really have 5 potential votes ? What happens if all those 5 homes have tenants and the owner lives in a rented (probably from the council) property elsewhere ?
Voters are usually “ordinary resident at” a single “home address”. Students being an obvious, and lawfully accepted, exception.
Curious Cat.
I can’t say I’m very surprised.
Perhaps this latest incident marks the beginning of this year’s Tower Hamlets pantomime ?
Will it end in tears ?
🙂
Curious, any news on those Commissioners? That’s all I want for Christmas
It’s certainly the case that you can be registered at more than one address – I certainly was (a very long time ago) when I was a student – on the basis you simply don’t know when an election will be called.
If you are not a student and normally live at one address then that would be the address you are expected to register at.
I seem to recall commenting when another one of Lutfur’s Councillors got herself into trouble in connection with illegal claims for housing benefit that there’s a pretty high burden of proof before you can arrest somebody.
In this case I would comment that it would be a very silly Police Force that didn’t make sure that they had sufficient and robust proof of proper cause if it was asking one of its officers to arrest a Councillor in relation to electoral fraud. It’s not the sort of thing that happens on the initiative of a lowly police officer.
I’d want to be doubly sure that a Police Officer was doing the right thing in arresting a Councillor if that Councillor happens to be a Cabinet Member in the Council with the worst record in the UK for “naughty and/or incompetent things happening at elections”.
Which, if I’m correct, actually tells us all rather a lot doesn’t it?
This is the link to the Government’s web page re the Police and Criminal Evidence (PACE) Act for those who’d like to look further into what’s involved in arresting somebody.
https://www.gov.uk/police-and-criminal-evidence-act-1984-pace-codes-of-practice
What I find fascinating is the reference in a comment above to an individual having two votes because they live and own a business in the borough. That does strike me as having the potential to be something of a Pandora’s Box should anybody choose to review this further re. practices in Tower Hamlets!
One upon a time, probably within our lifetime, in the UK business owners got a vote because they ran a business. It was called “The Business Vote”.
I vaguely remember that system was said to have operated in the 6 British counties of Ulster around the 1960’s in Derry where the Civil Rights protests started and the attacks on civilians were conducted by the police’s B Specials. It is amazing the UK government tolerated third-world treatment of some of its citizens in part of the UK.
You are correct about the TH arrest being determined well-above the pay-grade of a PC. It probably went to the Borough Commander (Supt or Chief Supt), if not higher. A very thorough police investigation is guaranteed.
The UK is far from perfect in many aspects. Tower Hamlets clearly shows England has still a lot to do to improve public life.
Curious Cat.
City of London has retained a “Business Vote” system
http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/about-the-city/how-we-work/elections-and-wards/wards/Pages/ward-elections.aspx
CC.
Northern Ireland’s business votes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_voting
CC.
Business addresses do not count as a suitable place to be registered to vote.
JK,
They do in the City of London for local election purposes.
CC.
CC – You’re not that old!
The Representation of the People Act 1949 abolished additional votes for graduates (university constituencies) and the owners of business premises.
Och aye,
I was a wee bairn at the time and didna know how to read.
🙂
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy – Victoria Park’s residents’ hearts are bleeding.
The bigger question is why did Tower Hamlets Council permit Ali to be registered in more than one place.
=> Jay Kay,
If you ever get to examine the entire electoral role maintained by a primary area local authority (e.g. London Borough council, borough council, district council, metropolitan borough council, unitary council etc. etc.) you will inevitably find duplicate, and usually some triplicate, entries not only for one set of names (forename and surname) but also for other persons comprising the apparently same household.
Councils are crap at weeding these out. Sometimes, and with no reference to LBTH, electoral registration staff are too lazy, too clueless or too bent (because they know the identity of the political party benefitting from the “extra entries”, so they tell protesters (who identify duplicate and triplicate entries) that there is nothing the council can do.
I have written a computer application that identifies all duplicate (and triplicate) entries in less than 4 minutes. Councils appear to currently lack anything as effective as my system. My system also instantly lists all the households where they are N (and more) voters at a single address. (N is a user selectable number). Its great at spotting dodgy households.
Local government wastes £ billions of public money every year because they are clueless about operating efficient public services and often refuse to have just a single version of a computer application for the entire country (England). With about 300 – 400 primary area councils why have more than 30 different computer applications doing (almost) EXACTLY the same work ?
One system for the entirely country would bring costs down and enable staff transferring to other councils to know exactly how the system works. Thus no unproductive training days or expensive training courses to attend. The private sector would hate this but, after all, it is the public’s money being effectively wasted.
Central government is equally as gormless as local government. Providing the public with good value for their money remains a distant dream.
N.B. I’m not standing in the General Election even though I really do like the Palace of Westminster as an inspiring building but the Commons chamber remains unfit for purpose 🙂
Curious Cat
Councils do not have to ‘weed out’ duplicate registrations. The applicant applies and the council considers the application. What did LBTH do in the case of Ali’s application is the question.
JK,
Are you stating the ERO (Electoral Registration Officer) has no duty of care and is not supposed to use Due Diligence (or reasonable care) when adding new entries to the register?
CC.
The pre June 2014 registration process was full of holes and, as CC said, not all election registration staff are on top of the situation.
The new registration process on an HMG website requires name, DOB, NI number, post code, address, a question about your residency(ies), nationality, whether you want a postal vote or not. These details are checked against DWP records. When confirmed, a letter is sent to you.
I wonder whether CC should sell his software to HMG to use on this site?
No. See the obligations of Councils for applications for registrations at more than one address.
Interesting how there is always just one vote against almost all of the comments above. Could this be oldford1/Marc Francis? I think we should be told.
This is all reminiscent of the scandal over the packing of the Labour Party membership lists which got Rahman selected in the first place. I seem to recall the rows at the Labour NEC with Livingstone and Shawcroft talking about a ” dodgy dossier ” and demanding that democratic will of the membership be respected. Oh plueese?
One of the scandals was that of xxx Hanbury St E1 which was owned by Rahman’s sister. She, her husband and AN Other joined the party a few days before the deadline. The problem was they were living somewhere else and the woman who did live there made a statement that she was renting the flat and had no idea who they were.
An acquaintance of mine who runs a local property company had, last year, to handling a planning appeal on behalf of the owners of Club Row School at Arnold Circus. For the appeal, which was successful, he organised a petition amongst local Bangladeshis in support of development.
Although his canvassers brought a hundred and fifty signatures from local Bangladeshis he decided to check them against the electoral register. They all existed, it was just that although they owned or rented the flats they actually all lived points east. and the checking took my acquaintance to Romford, Ilford, Gants Hill, Chingford and associated areas were the actual owners were living.
It is to be hoped that the electoral court will be looking into this, I’m not holding my breath.
Dave,
I have Richard Mawrey’s work email address. I found him a pleasant and helpful person. Although I can not speak for him, as the Commissioner he may be formally “interested” in other “suspicious” incidents in the same geographic area.
I recollect the High Court procedure is for two HC judges to appoint a Commissioner to hear the Election Petition. Afterwards the Commissioner makes a formal report to the 2 HC judges who appointed him – that report refers, inter alia, to the existence or non-existence of other election hanky panky in the same local authority area.
Unless someone tells the Commissioner “something” the Commissioner can not make a factually accurate report to the HC at the conclusion of the hearing. Local authority solicitors are notorious about concealing electoral handy panky from Election Petition Commissioners.
If you are (or anyone else is) aware of something electorally dodgy (and in TH there seems to be an abundance of “dodgy” things), may I helpfully suggest it is your civic duty to put your concerns in writing to the Commissioner ?
Curious Cat.
http://u22.net/cat
I have spoken to the property developer/planning consultant who is sympathetic but cannot release names and addresses because of confidentiality. It would be a breach of personal trust for them to do so.
They do say that the practice is rife right across the Boundary Estate and presumably across the borough. It seems the way to check is through a number of linked government computers that compare benefits claims, company directorships, tax receipts, NHS numbers and a wealth of other data.
I point I would raise is that if an entire household is still registered in Tower Hamlets but have decamped to parts east then there is the issue of the actual owner of the property possibly still having voting rights. Does anyone know about this?
Voting eligibility for English local elections is solely dependant on residency and being a EU or Commonwealth national.
Voting eligibly for English national elections (e.g. UK Parliament) is dependant on the same residency qualification and being a Commonwealth citizen.
NO VOTES IN ENGLAND, except for City of London local elections, in respect of property ownership and/or business interests.
For election purposes, Commonwealth includes Ireland even though it is no longer a member. GB is both a Commonwealth country and a EU member state but its voters only get one vote (unless they cheat).
Curious Cat.
Should obviously have been ” where the actual owners were living”.
A person may appear on the electoral register only if they reside at an address within the electoral area. Residence has been held to entail a ‘considerable degree of permanence’. This makes it possible for a person to be registered to vote in two different electoral areas. A person with two homes who spends about the same amount of time in each can be lawfully registered at both addresses.
However, it is unlikely that ownership of a second home would meet the residency qualification. Ownership of a second home that a voter pays council tax on but is not resident does not qualify them to be registered to vote in that area. It is for the local Electoral Registration Officer to decide in the light of an individual voter’s circumstances whether they may be said to be resident at an address, and therefore eligible for registration. Electoral Registration Officers are required to consider each case on its own merits hence my comments about the Councl.
If an elector is registered to vote in two different electoral areas, they are eligible to vote in local elections for the two different local councils. However, it is an offence to vote twice in the same type of election.
That will mean a hell of a lot of checking between now and next May. The only way the expenditure can be justified is if the powers that be have decided that having a third world type corrupt Islamic state in the middle of London has gone far enough, is an embarrassment and it’s best to get rid of it now before something happens that will project the whole thing onto a world stage and make everyone a laughing stock.
What exactly is the Election Commissioner empowered to do and what will his/hers powers actually be?
How much corruption does there have to be before the last election is declared null and void and new elections ordered?
When was the last time anything like this happened and what was the result?
I’m asking because, like most people I would suspect, this is all new to me.
=> Dave,
Checking is easy when the holders of multiple votes use the SAME forename and surname.
Tricks observed among some “Asian” voters (meaning from the Indian sub-continent = India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) include:-
(a) swapping surnames with forenames
(b) slightly misspelling forenames and surnames
(c) for someone called AAAAA BBBBBB CCCCCC sometimes registering as (forename, surname)
* CCCCCC AAAAA
* AAAA BBBBB
* BBBBB AAAAA
* BBBBB CCCCC
* AAAA CCCCC
* CCCCC BBBBB
* AAAAA-BBBBB CCCCCC
etc.
(d) An Asian voter is sometimes known as “Harry” or “Joe”, so the permutations increase ….
* Joe (or Harry) CCCCC
* Joe (or Harry) BBBBB
* Joe (or Harry) AAAAA
This has been going-on for at least the last 20 years and ignored by the major political parties because it delivers votes to them – and their own aim at elections is to win. It is much more common among Labour voters.
The Election Commissioner’s task is to hear the election petition (i.e. case alleging voting irregularities). At the conclusion of the hearing, to publish his judgement and formerly report back to the 2 HC judges whom appointed him.
Someone from the CPS will be present all the time taking notes (to build a prosecution case)
I empathise the vast majority of Indian sub-continent voters do not register multiple times or fake their voter entry. However some do.
Who educated and nurtured Son of Labour in the Black Art of English politics ? It wasn’t me. It was the Labour Party.
Curious Cat.
It’s no coincidence I think that these investigations always seem to be in communities from the Indian sub continent and to a certain extent amongst the orthodox Jews in Stamford Hill in North London.
Oldford1, curiously silent of late, has pointed out but in the wrong context that the methods used by Tower Hamlets First were skills honed by pretty much the same people when in the Labour Party. This is true because it is a South Asian way of doing politics and not a particularly Labour one.
There is nothing wrong in getting political power and then giving jobs and contracts to friends and family. That is simply the way things are done, always have been and probably always will. Similar systems pertain in Southall, the former mill towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire where there are large Asian populations and in other places as well
Loyalty is to a number of things in equal proportion, religion, country and area of origin, village, family and where applicable, cast. The other group of political activists that greatly underestimated these forces was the far or loony left which has pretty much fallen apart. This disintegration has been over a number of issues, not least the SWP rape crisis but the cracks appeared in Respect in Tower Hamlets.
I remember watching the elation of the far left when they got their twelve councillors elected in 2006 and to judge from the discussions on the web sites you would have thought that the revolution was just around the corner and that the revolutionary masses were about to march on Westminster from The Whitechapel Road.
In vain did commentators who knew the Bangladeshi community try to explain to the assorted swivel eyed Trots who were hailing this new vanguard of the revolution, they had long since given up on the white working class, that it was about a section of a community that was excluded from power within the existing order with a sprinkling of business men looking for opportunities who were engaging in a bit of local power play.
I can’t remember just how long the thing lasted, a couple of years maybe, and when it fell apart the far left just couldn’t and still can’t understand what happened. Galloway and co blamed the control freakery of the SWP, they claimed Galloway had moved to the right and abandoned the principles (sic) on which Respect was founded.
What had actually happened was that seeing that Respect was going nowhere locally never mind nationally Respect councillors and power brokers began talks with Labour, deals were done and the defections started. One Respect councillor went from the party and SWP membership direct to the Tories! He didn’t even stop off at the Lib Dems or Labour on the way.
We then saw the same thing happen in Bradford with Pakistanis of Kashmiri origin who were excluded from the Biridari system of patronage. It wasn’t a ” Bradford Spring” as the T Shirts on sale from Philosophy Football proclaimed, must a been a few of those remaindered, it was a reordering of the political system and nothing else.
Respect in Bradford collapsed quicker than in Tower Hamlets and I would expect that negotiations have been going on for some time to rejoin the Labour Party with council seats, jobs and grants already allocated.
It’s a tough time to be a Trot. Just imagine, you have spent all your life waiting for the revolution as predicted by the mass murdering guru Leon Trotsky and just when you should be enjoying your retirement in the workers paradise ordinary people come along and bugger it all up. Honestly, some people have no consideration!
Just been given this. Go to You Tube and put in The Bangladeshi East End. It’s actually the sixth in The Secret History of Our Streets series form BBC2 in 2011 this one being about the East End and Arnold Circus in particular. The Bangladeshi part is about half way through but the whole programme is a gem and well worth watching. It should be required watching for all those who claim the white working class benefited from slavery and colonialism, not much evidence here.
Oh, by the way. Has anyone got an address for Marc Francis?
Who is the mystery, more or less alone, thumbs downer?
The new electronic registration asks if you are also registered elsewhere. It does not proscribe that you cannot be registered in two places ( if you have a legitimate residential connection to two places).
There does seem to be a huge amount of leeway for individual registration officers to interpret the rules as they choose, rather than agreed standard guidance.
I really hope Knight doesn’t approve of council workers issuing press releases on the rates like that Wandsworth one you linked to above, Ted. Not really sure that’s the idea Pickles had in mind…