UK Tightens Security Around Conservative Party Vote

File photo. PA

Commentary

While Democrats continue to claim that 2020 was the fairest election in U.S. history and push for even fewer restrictions on mail-in voting in the midterms, the United Kingdom is starting to take electoral fraud more seriously.

As the Conservative Party leadership’s race to replace Boris Johnson reaches its final stage, all 160,000 Conservative members across the country get to vote on whether Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak will be their next leader and—as their side is currently in power—the next prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The winner will be announced on Sept. 5.

But something about the process spooked the spooks at GCHQ, Britain’s top-secret government communications center—in particular, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), which it runs.

The ballot was designed to allow members to vote by either mail or—for the first time—online, and, if they change their minds before voting ends, to then use the alternative method to cancel their previous choice.

The NCSC felt it necessary to explain to them that this opens the potential for “nefarious actors”—that’s hackers in plain speak—to also change the members’ votes, without being noticed. They advised them to make changes pronto, to “enhance security around the ballot process.”

Their solution was to have the members’ online codes deactivated once the ballot company receives their mail-in vote, meaning that members would no longer be able to change their votes at the last minute.

Interestingly, when writing about the GCHQ intervention, the supposedly impartial BBC compared it to the alleged Russian hacking of the 2016 Trump election win but made no mention of any irregularities in the 2020 vote, which saw Joe Biden enter the White House.

Although this isn’t an exact parallel to U.S. ballots, it’s an admission that voter fraud—especially regarding mail-in ballots—isn’t just possible but needs to be addressed.

It should be a cause of great embarrassment to the ones who are currently running the United Kingdom that they devised a voting system that hackers, either at home or abroad, could so easily exploit.

The Telegraph, which first broke the story, revealed that members received a note informing them: “Your ballot is now on the way—but it will arrive with you a little later than we originally said. Please do not worry. This is because we have taken some time to add some additional security to our ballot process, which has delayed us slightly.”

That British politeness is really a mask for, “We messed up, so the intel guys told us to scrap the bit where you get to change your mind.”

But this is an internal ballot, and, regardless of who wins, the Conservatives will stay in power, at least for now. The system was devised long before it was known who the final candidates would be, so this was an administrative goof rather than anything more sinister.

In a national ballot, however, the likelihood of willful voter fraud by the parties and third parties seeking to affect the outcome is much more likely. The need for electoral scrutiny at every level is, therefore, paramount.

Biden Admin Seeks to Boost ‘Voter Participation’

In 2020, the FBI did its job of detecting external threats. That includes Iranian hackers who allegedly managed to compromise the vote in Alaska and also tried in at least 10 other states, although it was less than circumspect at the local level, as the documentary “2000 Mules“ alleges.

While the Conservative Party heeded GCHQ’s warning and delayed sending out its ballots until extra security was added, those FBI alerts were ignored. Both political parties, for differing reasons, let the documented cases of election interference in Alaska go without a recount, which I wrote about last month.

In March 2021, Biden issued an executive order to all federal agencies, giving them 200 days to find “a strategic plan outlining the ways identified under this review that the agency can promote voter registration and voter participation.”

As a result, at the beginning of this year, assisted living facilities, public health centers, and job centers were turned into voter registration agencies.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development website now states: “HUD is asking owners [of HUD-assisted properties] to share voter and election resources with residents, including encouraging residents to visit vote.gov.”

Phill Kline, director of The Amistad Project, told Just the News that federal agencies participating in voter turnout efforts “is wrong” because they will target who they want to turn out to vote.

He added that the left is “trying to enshrine in law all the problems in the 2020 election.” He believes its focus is not on “running the government objectively, but obtaining power.”

With the Democrats controlling the White House, both houses of Congress, the Department of Justice, and, some say, the FBI, too, it’s difficult to see how things are going to change before the midterms.

George Soros is also reportedly investing heavily, including supporting efforts by a group called Promote the Vote for a constitutional amendment in Michigan that would require state funding for the postage of absentee applications and for the installation of absentee ballot drop boxes. They’re also seeking to prevent the enactment of strict voter ID requirements and to allow private donations to election officials.

But with Biden’s approval rating having dropped to below 30 percent in some polls, if the Democrats hold onto both houses of Congress, it would take a lot to convince the American people of the legitimacy of the election result.

In desperation, the Jan. 6 “show trial” might go nuclear and seek to have Donald J. Trump arrested before then.

The UK’s two prime ministerial candidates face a different problem. It has been disclosed in The Times that a slim majority of party members, whose votes they need, are upset that Johnson is no longer at the helm.

Is that why he never actually said the word “resign” in his resignation speech?

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.