The legitimacy of the hotly contested by-election in Gorton and Denton was thrown into doubt on Thursday as independent election observers claimed to have witnessed illegal “family voting” practices in which multiple people enter the voting booth, which some have tied to the constituency’s large Muslim population.
UPDATE 445: Far-left Green Party candidate Hannah Spencer has been announced as the winner of the Gorton and Denton by-election, with 14,980 votes, followed by Matt Goodwin of Reform UK with 10,578 votes, and Angeliki Stogia of the Labour Party with 9,364 votes.
The original story continues as follows…
The special election, which was sparked following the resignation of disgraced Labour MP Andrew Gwynne, has been marred by the apparent outbreak of sectarianism, with both the left-wing Labour Party and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK criticising the far-left Green Party for engaging in cynical tactics to court the Muslim vote, including running campaign ads entirely in foreign languages.
However, after the polls closed, more troubling accusations were made public, notably from the Democracy Volunteers independent election watchdog organisation, which observed votes in 22 of the 45 polling stations in the constituency, the BBC reported.
The group said that they witnessed “family voting” in 15 of the 22 stations they observed. Of the 545 instances of people casting their ballots, 32 involved someone else being present in the voting booth, which is prohibited by law to prevent undue influence on an individual’s voting preference.
John Ault, director of Democracy Volunteers, said: “Today we have seen concerningly high levels of family voting in Gorton and Denton. Based on our assessment of today’s observations, we have seen the highest levels of family voting at any election in our 10-year history of observing elections in the UK.
“We rarely issue a report on the night of an election, but the data we have collected today on family voting, when compared to other recent by-elections, is extremely high.”
Ault said that in the Gorton and Denton by-election, his group observed family voting at 68 per cent of polling stations, affecting 12 per cent of voters. In comparison, at last year’s Runcorn and Helsby by-election, Democracy Volunteers witnessed family voting at 12 per cent of stations, impacting one per cent of voters.
While the independent group did not specify the demographics of those engaging in the apparent electoral violations, some were quick to link the practice to the large cohort of Muslim voters in the area.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said: “This is deeply concerning and raises serious questions about the integrity of the democratic process in predominantly Muslim areas.”
Reform’s candidate for Gorton and Denton, Matthew Goodwin, added: “Given the reports we are reading in UK media about family voting and sectarianism, I am deeply concerned about the extent to which the Gorton and Denton parliamentary by-election is a free, fair, and democratic election.”
Some, including independent MP Adnan Hussain, who was elected to parliament in 2024 on a pro-Gaza platform in the heavily Muslim Blackburn constituency, denounced the claims as “vilification and scapegoating of a minority community”. Hussain was also quick to note that Democracy Volunteers did not specifically say that it was Muslims engaged in the family voting seen on Thursday.
However, Sam Coates, Deputy Political Editor for Sky News, said: “I was in Gorton and Denton and just trying to talk to people. I did speak to, tried to speak to a number of members of the South Asian community, women turned to me and just said ‘my husband does all that’ and I was quite struck by that.”
Coates noted that family voting often occurs with a “man standing over a woman” inside the ballot booth, presumably pressuring their wives or family members to vote in a specific way.
Given the close nature of the race, with the Greens, Reform UK, and Labour all polling near one another, accusations of family voting could lead to legal challenges. This could result in the disqualification of some votes, potentially changing the election result, or even triggering a new election.
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