"The Labour party has been warned by the Electoral Commission over its handling of postal vote applications after it investigated alleged irregularities in last year's Glasgow North East byelection.
The commission said an unusually high number of last minute postal vote applications were made in Glasgow North East, with 1,800 forms submitted less than three days before the registration deadline – more than a quarter of the total number received.
A spot check of 300 of those forms by the returning officer's staff found that in at least 100 cases these applications had been dated more than a week and in some cases over a month earlier.
Nearly half of the last-minute registrations came from Labour supporters, sparking allegations from the Scottish National party – first reported by The Guardian – that Labour had been deliberately hoarding postal votes to help its campaign.
In the event, Labour won by a landslide 8,111 votes, securing a 60% share of the vote and demolishing SNP hopes of a second victory in Labour's Glasgow heartland.
The commission said Labour "did not comply" with a code of conduct that requires political parties to hand in every postal vote application within two days of receiving them, and had been asked to honour those rules in future."
As I have said time and time again, some Labour party campaigners will be using the postal vote system to maximise the Labour vote; a very close eye will need to be kept on some Labour seats or the Florida 'hanging chads' will be as nothing...
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