LONG before the Holyrood campaign started the Tories were doing everything possible to garner some support through any means they could.
Postal votes appeared to be on their target list and their tactics included, as we previously reported, putting their party address in a more prominent position on a SAE than the local electoral registration office.
The Electoral Commission was less than happy with that, and said they had told the party “to remind their candidates they should ensure that the local Electoral Registration Officer’s address is clearly provided as the preferred address for the return of registration and absent vote application forms”.
Straightforward enough you might think, but now the Tories seem to have hit on another postal vote wheeze – cold-calling by phone.
One of our readers, who did not want to be named, told us: “I was rather alarmed when I received a telephone call today from the Conservative Party, urging me to do postal voting for any future elections.
“In spite of me saying I would not do postal voting, the lady really came down on me big-time to try to persuade me to change my mind, this made me very suspicious.”
They were also alarmed to read that census forms are to be sent first to a company in England for processing, in much the same fashion as some DWP correspondence.
That may well be a matter for another day, but our correspondent was worried that the census data could be used to “rig” postal votes.
They added: “There were many suspect votes in the last election with people being told ‘they had already voted’ – when they clearly had not, so who is doing these votes on their behalf?
“We should have no postal votes as they are clearly open to fraud, and voter ID should be shown when actually voting as too many things went wrong at our last independence vote.
“Please pass this on to other SNP members.”
Postal vote fears have been relayed to The National from various places, including Dumfries, Bearsden and Tain, so it appears not to affect one single area.
The Tories have already been accused of sailing “perilously” close to the wind on the issue, following the Electoral Commission’s comments.
However, the Tories have not responded to our request for comment in this case.
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