Alliance welcomes electoral fraud review

12.00.00am GMT Tue 9th Dec 2003

Alliance Party General Secretary, Stephen Farry, has welcomed the publication by the Electoral Commission of their Review of the Electoral Fraud (Northern Ireland) Act 2002.

Dr Farry stated:

"It is right that the Electoral Fraud legislation is reviewed after the first major election in which it was operated.

"We must not forget the reasons for the introduction of this legislation - the perceptions of organised electoral fraud, and an absence of full confidence in the integrity of the Northern Ireland electoral process.

"It was for these reasons that there was almost cross-party support for the new legislation."

"Clearly, there have been some significant teething problems with the implementation of the legislation.

"There may well be some justification for allowing a one-year carry over of names for one annual register to the next. However, to do this in the first year of operation of the new personal registration process would have been unwise, and would have defeated the purpose of combating electoral fraud by replicating fraudulent entries under the previous methodology.

"The case for easing the process of rolling registration is also strong. Hopefully, the delays with issuing Electoral ID cards will not be repeated."