Following the Tories catastrophic general election results, a petition demanding a “full investigation” into students who have allegedly voted twice – “once in their university constituency and once in their home constituency” – has been signed by almost 25,000 people.
The evidence that voting irregularities have taken place? A single Tweet from a young Twitter user reading “I voted 3 times today, twice for #Labour and once for #UKIP. Get out and vote!!”
The Tweet has since been taken down and the person responsible has claimed that it was a joke… not a particularly good one, obviously, but hardly a firm basis for an anti-electoral fraud campaign.
No way is my joke tweet being used on a petition with 22k signs, unbelievable pic.twitter.com/ZffOUZGPi2
— Snipars (@NiallSnipars) June 13, 2017
The fine for voting twice in a general election is up to £5,000, and whilst there are cases of it happening at recent general elections, it is so uncommon as to be completely ineffective.
According to a report by the electoral commission, there were just 92 cases of voter fraud reported in the 2015 general election. Of these, only 15 resulted in any action being taken by the police. This amounts to 0.00004% of the total voting population
There is no reason to believe that this would be significantly different today.
Socialist policies gaining mass appeal
Much of the mainstream media is in denial about the fact that socialist policies are gaining a mass appeal across the country. It is likely, therefore, that isolated cases of voter fraud, with scant evidence to back it up, could lay the basis for smear campaigns against socialists.
The political establishment is at a loss to explain how Corbyn could have come so close to getting elected. Already we have seen Tory and Blairite politicians attempt to spin the election as the “revenge of the young against the old.”
This is divisive rubbish. One of the Tories’ first and most disastrous errors in their election campaign was their pledge to cut the “triple lock” on state pensions. British pensioners are already amongst the worst off in Europe. Little wonder that many voted for Labour instead.
The truth is that the working and middle classes have nothing to gain from a Tory government, and more and more people are waking up to this fact.
The creator of the petition states that it will be sent to The Sun, so we can expect the howls of “corrupt Corbyn” to begin any day now! They will do anything to besmirch Corbyn’s general election gains.
But what this shows is that the establishment is now on the back foot. Let’s seize this opportunity and go on the offensive. One step forward and we can install a Corbyn government. Another step forward and the sky’s the limit.
