Urgent reforms are needed to Britain's election system to stamp out fraud, Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy has warned.
Speaking to The Birmingham Post, he called for postal votes to be counted separately from votes cast in a polling station, to make cheating easier to spot.
It follows the court case last month in which Richard Mawrey QC, the Election Commissioner, concluded there had been a "Birmingham-wide" attempt to rig last year's local election results.
Mr Kennedy said: "It is wrong that there is even the suspicion that their ballot paper could be tampered with by a politician.
"We have opposed all-postal ballots without proper safeguards and we have called for urgent reforms before polling day to prevent the sorts of abuses we saw in Birmingham. " Mr Kennedy also pledged to scrap plans for a toll motorway between the West Midlands and Manchester if the Liberal Democrats gained power.
Mr Kennedy said: "Our research has shown that the existing toll road has simply generated more traffic, and we don't believe we can build our way out of trouble."
