Postal Voting 2

INNER CITY “DIRTY TRICKS” CLAIM OVER POSTAL VOTING.

17-04-2008

"Dirty tricks" are being used to try and entrap political rivals according to an inner city Labour councillor.  He claims to have had three phone calls in one day to trying to persude him to break the law.  Once again, postal votes are at the heart of the allegations.

Shafique Shah (Bordesley Green) says he had an enquiry yesterday from a man giving a Pakistani name who said he wanted a postal vote for all 35 members of his extended family.

"I said 'fine, fill in the form and send it off to the election office.'  He asked if he could send it to one of the Labour candidates to fill in instead.

"I told him we couldn't do that, but if he wanted help he should give us his name and address - but he wouldn't.

"Five minutes later we had a call from a guy saying that he was a Labour supporter who liked what we did and he wanted to help us, but he might not be around at election time.

"He asked if we could fill in his application for him.  Again we said no.  And again he wouldn't tell us his name or where he lived."

Shah also said that earlier in the day, a “flirty” woman rang and asked him for photocopied information from the full electoral register which is only sent to candidates. She also refused to give her personal details.

He blames political rivals for trying to entrap him into illegally signing postal votes, saying, “they are trying anything anything. These are sill tricks, dirty tricks.”

The advice from Labour’s West Midlands HQ is to beware these calls and refer anyone - or anything - suspicious to Birmingham’s Election Office.