Polling stations in Birmingham's most politically-sensitive wards will be even quieter than usual at the city council elections on June 10. But the lack of interest may not, this time, have anything to do with apathy among the electorate. The explanation lies instead in an unprecedented increase in the number of postal votes applied for in chiefly Muslimdominated inner city areas. With almost 60,000 requests for postal ballot forms submitted so far, Birmingham is riven with claims of fraud on a huge scale. Last month the council reported an incident to the police in which an application for 16 postal ballot forms came from a single house. John Hemming, leader of the Liberal Democrat group on the city council, submitted a dossier to the West Midlands Police setting out what he says is a systematic abuse of the system. Coun Hemming (Acocks Green) put the spotlight on the Muslim-led People's Justice Party and the Labour Party, who he accuses of manipulating postal votes. Bordersley Green, the centre of a bitter three-way battle between the Liberal Democrats, the PJP and Labour, has 19,500 registered electors. One third have applied for postal votes. In South Yardley, the ward which Coun Hemming is contesting, applications for postal votes are concentrated on a small, tight-knit Asian community. There are 493 people in Oldknow Road registered to vote, 135 have applied for postal votes. In Malmesbury Road, 559 people are on the electoral register, 173 of them have applied for a postal vote. Coun Hemming has identified several ways in which he alleges postal votes are being "stolen". * Standing Over - representatives from a political party stand over people who have been sent postal votes, forcing them to fill them in and hand them over * Blank ballot - blank ballot papers are collected and filled in, witness signatures are forged * Whole envelope - the entire postal ballot form and witness form are taken from houses, unopened, and then filled in and witnessed by party activists * Bribery - postal votes are simply bought for between £3 and £5 each Another method favoured by fraudsters is to apply for postal votes without informing the person in whose name the application has been lodged. Coun Hemming said: "I have obtained a list of people in my ward who have theoretically applied for postal votes but, in fact, know nothing about it. I have passed the list to the police. "The CID are currently investigating reports of disabled people being forced to give up their postal votes and other acts of intimidation and violence. "In my evidence submitted to the police I give an example of a man who, when he was in hospital, had his postal ballot form handed over to Labour by his brother. When he tried to get it back, he could not." The battle for postal votes has intensified since the Government decided to simplify the system three years ago. It is no long necessary to prove special circumstances to vote by post and, crucially, there is no method for checking witness signatures. In Birmingham, the instructions that accompany ballot papers are not written in Punjabi or Urdu, leading to claims that many Muslim voters do not understand how to fill in the forms. The People's Justice Party denied all of Coun Hemming's allegations. Amir Khan, a PJP candidate in Nechells ward, said he and his colleagues were simply attempting to ensure that people with a poor grasp of English understood the voting process. He added: "People don't know what the forms say. They are throwing them in the bin and think they can then turn up and vote at the polling station. It is a very awkward situation." A West Midlands Labour Party spokeswoman said Coun Hemming's allegations were "simply not credible." Birmingham was the centre two years ago of claims of widespread postal ballot fraud but a police inquiry found no evidence to substantiate the allegations. However, the council pleaded successfully with the Government for the West Midlands to be excluded from holding this month's elections on an all-postal ballot basis. | 
