Postal Voting in the UK

This post will summarize ongoing events and publications regarding postal voting and "absent voting" in the UK.

The UK Election Commission proposed an extension of "postal voting" to local elections in 2003, after a vote modernisation report (here) found that postal voting worked well and two public opinion studies (here and here) found that the public liked alternative, convenient voting schemes.

The Guardian provides a nice summary of the Commission's report. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/apathy/story/0,12822,1009974,00.html

3/17/2005 Jonathan Gass off of the election law listserv posts this story about possible postal voting fraud in Birmingham: http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,,1428939,00.html

3/23/2005: Rick Hasen has a follow up: an election judge in Birmingham condemned the postal voting system as an "open invitation to fraud." The link is here: http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=4295616