Young man pleads guilty to voting for Labour twice in the general election

A man has pleaded guilty to breaking electoral law by voting for Labour twice in the general election.

Mohammad Zain Qureshi, 21, admitted he had undertaken the illegal practice of double voting, “having registered twice at his home address in Waltham Forest, northeast London, using a minor variation of his name,” says The Independent.

Quereshi used his postal ballot and then voted in person at his local polling station in the constituency of Chingford and Woodford Green.

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Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, “represents the seat, but his majority fell to 2,438 at the snap election in June from 8,386 in 2015,” reports The Times.

After the election, Qureshi was identified as being behind a Twitter post made on polling day in which he declared he had voted twice for Labour.

In the post he said he had voted once by postal vote and a second time in person at the polling station.

The Electoral Commission said in July that it had received more than 1,000 complaints about people voting twice in the general election. It said that it would work with the government to find solutions to minimise the practice and raised the option of forcing people who are lawfully registered at two addresses for council elections to choose which they wish to be registered at for general elections.

“Many of the complaints received by the commission were about students voting twice, once in their home town and once in the seat of their university,” adds The Times.

DI Gail Granville, of the Special Enquiry Team, said: “This result demonstrates the Met’s commitment to ensuring free and fair elections for all of our communities.”