General Election: 3000 proxy vote applications are rejected amid concerns of fraud

NI Chief Electoral Officer Virginia McVea told the News Letter that just over 3,000 proxy vote applications have been turned down.

Earlier this week Fermanagh and South Tyrone united unionist candidate Tom Elliott expressed ongoing concern about the alleged abuse of the proxy and postal votes in his constituency. For some time unionists in particular have expressed concerns that the methods were being abused across NI.

Electoral Office figures show 16,969 people have received a postal vote for this week, down from 23,687 in the last general election.

Proxy votes have also dropped from 11,707 in 2017 to 8,820 for this week’s poll, a dip of 2,887.

The highest registrations for this week have been Fermanagh and South Tyrone with 2,546 postal votes and 1,557 proxies, with Foyle reaching 1,017 postals and 906 proxies.

Mid Ulster has 1,792 postal votes, South Down 1,047, East Londonderry 1,013 and West Tyrone 1,536.

DUP director of policy Lee Reynolds said that improvements have been made.

“We have got a bit more effective oversight but more can be done,” he said. “We have looked at the application forms used and think that more can be done to ensure a free and fair vote.

“Interestingly postal and proxy votes are down generally. I think that part of the reason is that the whole process is now done centrally so there is more consistency. Previously the decisions would have been made in regional offices.”

A range of parties have complained for years that people who had not voted were having their doors knocked on polling evening, offering them a lift to the polling station. The allegation has been that polling agents are illegally taking information out of polling stations on who has not voted.

Mr Reynolds said the loss of police officers from polling stations due to lessening security threats has not helped.

But Ms McVea told the News Letter that while parties have alleged this was happening, no member of the public had ever contacted her about it.