Election Petitions

The Electoral Commission is calling for the law on election petitions to be reformed.  It is not clear whether they want to make it harder or easier. 

I attended the Court hearing in the only case that Brent has had of an election petition in the past decade _ that contesting Liberal Democrat councillor Pawan Gupta in Dudden Hill in 2006.  It certainly gave me the impression that electoral law was less than straightforward.  I recall the Judge at one point asked Gavin Millar QC for references to precedent.  The response came that there might well be precedents on both sides of the point.   Election law seems to have developed in quite a haphazard way partly through Common Law and partly via occasional and isolated bits of legislation.

I suppose that is precisely the kind of thing that Harold Wilson set up the Law Commission to sort out. 

In any case, even if the cost of challenging is reduced, I suspect that challenges will will remain rare, as even if a new election is called the challenger is often unsuccessful.  This was true of Pawan Gupta's case.  He lost in Court, forcing a by election, but won the by election in 2007 by a narrow margin.  The successful challenge by a Liberal Democrat to Phil Woolas in 2010 also led to a by election in Oldham and Saddleworth, which Debbie Abrahams wn for Labour by a fair margin.