BNP fail in bid to stop postal votes

The British National Party has failed in its bid to stop postal voting in Kirklees.

The BNP has three members on Kirklees Council but their supporter’s bid to halt the postal vote at the forthcoming May elections was rejected. The action by the BNP member was turned down at Bradford County Court. At the hearing yesterday the application for an injunction to stop the Returning Officer from issuing postal ballot papers was refused by the judge, who also made the BNP pay the council’s costs.

The BNP’s application was later condemned by council leader Cllr Robert Light, who said it had been a futile waste of time and a cheap publicity stunt.

Cllr Light said: "This was simply a gimmick by the BNP to get cheap publicity. Postal voting is part of electoral law that all councils follow. All the BNP has done is waste the time of council officers by going through the process of addressing what was always going to be a futile action by the perpetrators of this bogus case. The judge clearly considered that the application was ill-conceived by not only rejecting the application but also in awarding the council its costs against the BNP. It is an absolute waste of time to challenge statute in this way.”

BNP group chairman Cllr Roger Roberts said it was a move made by an individual member, not a councillor.

But he added: “I would personally support the idea. Postal voting is fine for the disabled and the elderly but it is very open to fraud. When you get 20 votes coming out of a one-bedroom flat, it is patently wrong.”

Huddersfield Daily Examiner