A senior Tory party official has lashed out at election officials in the UK, saying that they “turned a blind eye to voter fraud for fear of offending woke sensibilities”.
Greg Clark, Britain’s so-called Levelling Up secretary, has demanded that election officials in the country stop ignoring voter fraud in the hopes of avoiding causing offence to “woke sensibilities”.
In particular, Clark raised an issue with so-called “family voting”, a practice most commonly found in areas of Britain with large South Asian heritage Muslim populations where often women are coerced into voting for a party or candidate by their husbands or another member of their family or community.
Other forms of voter fraud have also been historically common in areas with large populations of Muslims, with there being confirmed reports of large-scale mail-in voting fraud ranging back to the early 2000s in such areas.
According to a report by The Telegraph, Clark has lashed out at Britain’s Electoral Commission over such voter fraud, saying that “any cultural practice of husbands being allowed to instruct their wives” while inside the voting booth must be stamped out.
“It is completely unacceptable in this age for anyone’s vote to be watched or pressured inside a polling station,” Clarke is reported by the publication as saying, with the Tory party politician emphasising that “the secrecy of the ballot is as important in the 21st century as it was in the 19th”.
“Any cultural practice of husbands being allowed to instruct their wives how to vote is an insult to the hard-fought liberty of female suffrage,” he continued. “The law must be applied equally and fairly to everyone, even if that offends ‘woke’ sensibilities.”
The Telegraph reports that sensitivities to do with race and religion appear to have prevented the Electoral Commission from clamping down on the practice.
The constituency recently returned Muslim executive mayor Mohammad Lutfur Rahman to power, with the former leftist Labour politician regaining his former position after being removed from it and banned from running for office for five years after being found guilty of various corrupt acts.
In particular, a judge ruling on the case said that Rahman had “engaged in personation, false registration, double-voting, [and] tampering with ballot papers”, used public resources for “obvious electioneering”, and even wielded “undue spiritual influence” over the Muslim voters of his constituency, with local Muslim clerics ordering their congregations that it was “the duty of faithful Muslims to vote for Mr Rahman”.
Lutfur Rahman has since once again been embroiled in scandal over his most recent victory, with The Mail reporting that footage has emerged that allegedly appears to show a key campaigner for the Muslim politician urging his fellow campaigners to “collect” votes from elderly and sick voters.
Regardless of the veracity of these accusations, Tower Hamlets is far from the only place in Britain where the integrity of elections in areas with large Muslim populations is under question, with reports emerging all the way back in 2005 of major fraud.
“Marginal, particularly Asian wards were the target of postal vote fraud,” then-elections commissioner Richard Mawrey said at the time, with one constituency having a voter turnout rate of 350 per cent.
The official subsequently accused local Labour party activists of using mail-in voting fraud to counter anti-muslim sentiment drummed up at the time by the Iraq war.
“It would be surprising if similar incidents did not occur in future elections in such areas,” Mawrey went on to comment.
Neither Rahman or the councillors fraudulently elected in Birmingham were brought to book by the Electoral Commission or the police, however, with ordinary voters forced to bring the scandals to court under the Representation of the People Act after they failed to intervene.