Gordon Clown .Com

The Times has revealed today that Labour party workers in Leeds are deliberately attempting to rig postal votes by collecting them from voters and selectively posting only the Labour votes.  A Times undercover reporter posing as a Labour volunteer recorded this conversation:

Keith Wakefield, the leader of the Labour group on Leeds city council, drives two students and an undercover reporter to Gipton and Harehills.

Wakefield: So our job, I believe, will be to make sure they have either done it [their postal vote] or we help them…Now the reason why it’s really, really important on this one: the average postal votes for a ward in [the] city is 800 to 1,000, there’s 4,000 postal votes [in Gipton and Harehills]… So it’s make or break…as you know, more people vote through postal than not. If we can get back those votes for Labour we can win this. So it’s really, really important that we chase the votes. I have never known as many postal votes in any election in 20 years.

Student 2: Do you know why it’s so many?

Wakefield: Yes. We can speak amongst friends. It’s very much an Asian, half Asian, half white working-class ward. And er, both, all the parties use the Muslim connections, which probably some people would frown at, and families to get everyone on postal.

Student 1: That’s exactly what we’ve done in our ward.

Wakefield: Oh right yes. So while there is paranoia in the country about the use of Asian voting systems…as we all know, they have a brilliant network; they pass it on; they all want to use the postal.

Wakefield, students and undercover reporter arrive in the car park at the Fairway pub in Gipton and meet Graham Hyde, a Labour councillor. Hyde briefs the group on what to do.

Hyde: Simply, what I want you to do is you knock on the door, say you are from the Labour party…‘Have you received your postal votes?… These are all Labour people. ‘Have you returned it?’ If they give it to you in your hand, you collect it and put it in the postbox…If they haven’t, you say: ‘Have you got your postal vote?’

Wakefield: You’ve got to do it for them.

Hyde: The thing is we want to know who has returned them. And if you are knocking on the door and they have a postal vote and they haven’t done it, ‘Would you like to do it? We’ll put it in the post?’ You have to do it very careful…because they [the opposition or the authorities] are watching everyone.

Wakefield: I know, I know.

Hyde: All these here are postal votes.

Wakefield: All we are doing is chasing the postal… Do you have to seal it [the postal ballot] before posting?

Hyde: Yeah, seal it all up… We also want to check they are voting Labour as well. Yeah? If they are voting Liberal Dem, then don’t offer to put the postal vote in. We’ve found 10 so far out of all those we’ve done in Gipton.

Student 3: ‘Yes, I’ll post that for you!’ [laughs]

Hyde: Yes that’s it, and then it ends up in the toilet [laughs]. I know…Put the postal vote form out of sight, or if you are passing a postbox throw it in it. Don’t get caught with any on you. We are not supposed to collect them.

Student 4: Yes, it’s illegal to collect.

Hyde: Yeah.

Reporter: Is it? Why?

Student 4: It’s illegal to collect, isn’t it?

Hyde: Yes it is, but we’ve done 25% already, so…