[Gayle]

I'm not sure about compulsory voting and I don't know if it would work or not but I do know that the current system is open to abuse as it is.

I'm not saying that any of this happened in these elections just that I saw three places where there is opportunity for an unscrupulous person to fix the result.

1. Postal votes - how easy is it for a candidate or a person pretending to help an elderly person complete their vote?
2. At the polling station - towards the end of the day it is easy to find out who has voted and who hasn't. As you don't need a polling card to vote a person could go into a polling station and pretend to be someone else who hasn't voted.
3. At the count - a batch of 50 votes could be labelled up incorrectly (it did actually happen on Thursday in Hyndburn although it is assumed it was an accident).

Like I said, I saw no evidence of any of these things happening in Hyndburn so I'm not making any accusations. I know that there was a big fuss one year in Birmingham about postal voting so obviously it can and does happen.