Idox Elections

Idox Elections
Instrumental in Tory rigging of UK elections?
Interest of	Peter Lilley

Idox Elections is part of the Idox Group which, since 2012, has provided electoral services on behalf of UK central and local government, including Electoral Registration, Elections Management, Print solutions, Postal Vote Management System (PVMS), Personal Identifier Matching, E-Counting, Internet & Telephone Voting and Early Voting.

Tory MP Peter Lilley, who stood down at the UK/2017 General Election, is a Director of the Idox Group.

Stolen ballot papers

In April 2015 a van, containing more than 200,000 ballot papers that were being taken to two constituencies - Hastings and Rye and Eastbourne - ahead of voting in the General Election on 7 May 2015, was stolen. In March 2017, a commentator remarked:

"You’d think that when the Police in 2017 are investigating the Tory Party in more than 2 dozen constituencies concerning 2015 election irregularities, that a van with 200,000 ballot papers on board, destined for East Sussex being stolen from a street in East London in the same year 2015, might be seen as being a little suspicious?

"It seems a wee bit strange that there’s nothing in the press or on the net as to the outcome of the investigation into 'a white Mercedes Benz Sprinter registration KN64 UPD with 200,000 Ballot Papers having been stolen in 2015 ever being recovered.' Unless of course someone knows different!"

Copeland concerns

In March 2017 concerns were raised by a firm of electoral analysts about the apparent unlawfulness of the conduct of the 2017 Copeland by-election last week – and subsequently, video footage in which a BBC reporter talked about the ‘unusual’ handling of the trays used for ballot papers and separate footage in which BBC Question Time host David Dimbleby announced that Labour had held Copeland then quickly retracted it.

The figure of 9,000 is broadly in line with that reported for the 2015 by-election, in spite of what is later confirmed as the lower turnout in 2017. As the BBC’s Tom Bateman observed around 3am, the voting trays were still empty. An eyewitness at the scene reports that reports were circulating that Labour were ahead – until ‘boxes of postal votes arrived‘ at 1am. Sky’s Boadle knew at least roughly how many postal votes had been cast before midnight and pictures were taken earlier in the evening of paper bags of postal votes waiting to be counted, as this photograph from a Daily Express page covering the by-election showed:

So why were boxes of postal votes arriving at 1am – long after Dimbleby and others were reporting a Labour hold? These late-arriving votes are extremely unlikely to be postal votes handed in at polling stations on the day – in the 2015 General Election, the total number of postal votes handed in was just 157 – such votes are counted and recorded separately, so the exact figure is known for 2015.

But, significantly, not yet for 2017. The number of postal votes – indicated approximately by Sky’s Tom Boadle above – was about the same as the number returned in the 2015 General Election, which had a significantly higher turnout (2015 63.8% v 51.4% 2017). Even though postal vote ‘turnout’ might hold up better at a by-election than in-person votes, in the context of the ‘unusual’ behaviour commented on by Bateman, it’s a cause for concern that merits investigation.

Links to Lilley

The SKWAWKBOX has been advised that IDOX, an electoral services company of which senior Tory MP Peter Lilley is a director, ran the election on behalf of the local authority. The SKWAWKBOX contacted IDOX today, but a spokeswoman advised she was not permitted to confirm and only the local authority could do so.

So, we now have a situation in which:

• BBC and other announcers said Labour had held Copeland; others report it as ‘too close to call’.
• the BBC reporter on the scene commented on the ‘unusual’ emptiness of the ballot trays and absence from view of the cast, counted ballots.
• a figure of 9,000 was given for the total number of postal votes before midnight on election day.
• postal votes were photographed in bags already at the venue waiting to be counted.
• over an hour later, at 1am, large quantites of supposed postal votes in boxes turn up at the venue to be counted.
• just after 3am on the 24th, Tory candidate Trudy Harrison is announced the winner of the Copeland by-election by just a whisker below 7 full percentage points, or 2,147 votes out of just over 31,000, which is not really ‘too close to call’, let alone a ‘Labour hold’.

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Tory in Charge of Entire Scottish Council Election Count	Article	29 April 2017	Mel Kelly	Being a software engineer myself, my first thought was - could this be easily used to print replacement postal votes with the voters' ID and their signature, changing our vote for a different candidate while binning your postal vote? I had to conclude yes it could.

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