“Can Richard Tice provide any details or evidence for this?”
Richard Tice has again added to the list of claims that Reform UK has made without providing evidence.
Reform’s Deputy Leader said during urgent questions on the government’s new electoral strategy that on postal votes, the right-wing party has “grave concerns” about “the risks to security” and “impersonation”.
He added: “I myself, Minister, have seen people carry bagloads of postal votes to a polling station on election day. That is surely completely wrong.”
Democracy minister Rushanara Ali responded: “Impersonating another voter is a deliberate act of fraud. It completely undermines our democracy and is a serious criminal offence that will continue to be prosecuted.”
Ali added: “If he has examples he should report it to the police.”
On social media, the HuffPost’s Kevin Schofield quote-tweeted a clip of Tice’s comments with a quote from a Labour source.
The source said: “Can Richard Tice provide any details or evidence for this? Why has he not reported this to either the police, the Electoral Commission, or local returning officers?”.
In June last year, Nigel Farage made similar claims, stating that he believed there was “corruption in our postal vote system and many other things”, echoing conspiracy theories shared by Trump supporters about ballot harvesting.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4, he said he wanted Donald Trump to return to the White House and suggested Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden due to issues like “ballot harvesting”.
Ballot harvesting refers to adding fake postal ballots to ballot boxes to artificially boost the votes of one candidate.
Tice also said that Reform does not support lowering the voting age to 16. He said: “We at Reform are very much against votes for 16 and 17-year-olds. It’s interesting to know that they themselves are completely split down the middle on this issue.”
The government will include votes for 16 and 17 year olds in its new Elections Bill.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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