Political

Conservative election convicted over nomination paper trickery

First the original story from August…

A Conservative Party agent has appeared in court on charges of electoral fraud. She’s accused of tricking people into signing nomination papers for the last Hackney Council elections:

A Tory party election agent falsified candidate nomination forms in the 2018 local elections, a court heard today (Mon). Diana Danescu, 28, allegedly obtained voters’ signatures ‘under false pretences’ by posing as a representative from the Labour Party and The Green Party. Danescu is said to have carried out the offences during her role as an election agent for 29 Conservative candidates. [Court News UK]

It is also claimed by the prosecution that she, “included within 11 different nomination forms for the local council elections, the apparent signatures of individuals who did not in fact sign the forms.”

Diana Danescu has pleaded not guilty.

As is so sadly common with such cases, it’s worth highlighting how long this one has taken to get to court. The allegations are about the 2018 local elections, now over two years ago. It took a year to charge her and now another year for the case to come to court.

Slow justice is not good justice.

And now the latest news…

A Conservative party election agent has been convicted of tricking voters in a Labour stronghold borough into signing nomination forms for Tory candidates in a local election … She was handed a six-month suspended sentence and told to undertake 200 hours of community service. [The Guardian]

2 responses to “Conservative election convicted over nomination paper trickery”

  1. The nomination process is remarkably lax. Nothing is checked by the electoral services department (apart from the fact that a person is on the electoral roll). We had a query about a candidate and were told that we could challenge if he/she won. However just by standing the result could be affected.

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