This complaint comes from a UKIP MEP seeking reelection who thinks
UKIP voters are so crassly stupid that they can’t unfold a piece of
paper. (How do they manage faced with a roll of the stuff in the
loo?) This is the same MEP who said women should stay at home and
clean behind the fridge and about whom the Times reports more
seriously - - -
“UKIP MEP pays 3 assistants at an investment company
Saturday's Times reported that UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom is using his
parliamentary staff allowance to pay three assistants who are also
employed at an investment company in which he is a major
shareholder. He employs his 20-year-old niece and two other members
of staff at TBO Investments, despite a statement on his website which
reads: "Godfrey Bloom employs no immediate members of his family on
his secretarial allowance, unlike most other MEPs (non-UKIP)."
via Open Europe 1/6/09
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be a problem with ballot papers because of the way they have been
folded.
The Electoral Commission has told Sky News that following complaints
from members of the public they have advised returning officers in
every region of the country to contact all polling stations.
Members of staff at the stations are being advised to unfold the
paper before it is handed to voters.
UKIP which appears at the end of a list of parties standing in the
European elections say it has received hundreds of complaints from
around the country.
One UKIP MEP, Godfrey Bloom, told Sky News that the party has lodged
a formal complaint challenging the legality of the whole election.
"If this problem is as big as we think it is - we will be demanding a
re-run of the entire process," he said.
"This is a sign of the country we now live in. This is a complete
shambles and makes a mockery of a democratic process that is hundreds
of years old."
UKIP says it has already set legal proceedings in motion.
Mr. Bloom said the party feared that it may be denied thousands of
votes.
"Even people who have been going in to the polling stations intending
to vote for us have not been able to find UKIP on the list because
the paper is razor-folded along the bottom edge," he said.
"It makes it extremely difficult in some parts of the country to find
us on the list and several hours have elapsed in which this fault has
not been rectified."
Labour MP Tom Harris has hit back at the claims, mocking any
potential comparisons to electoral fraud in countries such as Zimbabwe.
"The thousands of political refugees who have claimed asylum in
Britain in recent years rarely mention the murders, rapes, beatings,
intimidation and land-grab," he wrote on his blog.
"No, no, no… It was the insistence by Harare returning officers on
folding ballot papers that finally persuaded them to jump in the back
of that lorry for the 3000-mile journey to Blighty."
The Electoral Commission said that polling station staff had been
advised to hand the folded ballot papers to voters but was now
advising that the forms should be unfolded first.
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