The utterly hypocritical Tory attitude to electoral fraud

The absolute brass neck of Tories like Eric Pickles never ceases to astound.

The latest Tory wheeze is to massively exaggerate the scale of voter fraud in order to introduce new American style voter ID rules that would end up disbarring hundreds of thousands of poor voters (who are very much less likely to vote Tory than wealthier demographics).

Pickles' own report admits that there were only 130 allegations of voter fraud in the General Election year 2015, which means that the allegations of electoral fraud to votes cast ratio was 0.00025%, or one allegation of voter fraud for every 395,384 votes cast!

This minuscule figure contrasts sharply with the ratio of electoral fraud allegations aimed at Tory MPs. In all 29 Tory MPs have been accused of fraudulently rigging the 2015 General Election by faking their accounts. The Tory party orchestrated a deliberate policy overspending in marginal constituencies by falsely declaring local spending in their national campaign budget.

With 29 of the 330 Tory MPs elected in 2015 accused of electoral fraud, the ratio of fraud allegations to Tory MPs is 8.8%, or one allegation of electoral fraud for every 11 Tory MPs.

This means that in 2015 the ratio of electoral fraud allegations levelled against Tory MPs was 32,500 times higher than the ratio of electoral fraud allegations against members of the public!

Instead of addressing the incredibly serious allegations against his fellow Tory MPs, Eric Pickles is determined to distract attention away from the Tory electoral fraud scandal by pointing the finger of blame at us, the general public.

Pickles' report contains hundreds of recommendation points, but not a single one of them relates to the 29 Tory MPs who stand accused of cheating their way into parliament!

Sadly there are an awful lot of Tory tribalists out there who will celebrate this latest cynical effort to rig the electoral system even further in favour of the Tories by disenfranchising innocent voters who have done nothing wrong.

The irony is that if the opposition parties put up a fight against this latest Tory vote-rigging scam, the 29 Tory MPs who stand accused of cheating their way into parliament will end up holding the balance of power on whether to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

As Eric Pickles report says in the introduction: "a group of people who cheat their way to power are unlikely to hold a higher moral standard when handing out public contracts, or making [other decisions]".

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