United Kingdom general election, 1992

The UK general election, 1992 was held on April 9, 1992, and was the fourth victory in a row for the Conservatives.

The problem of electoral fraud

Given that the 1992 election resulted in a Conservative overall majority of 21, it has been stated that their victory could be said to have been decided by only 1,241 votes distributed through the 11 seats with the smallest Conservative majorities in the election. If those seats had not been Conservative, the party would not have had an overall majority.

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There have been allegations of electoral fraud through a process known as 'granny farming' at the election. This process involves pressuring elderly people in residential homes to sign forms for proxy votes, or to sign forms for postal votes and then subsequently altering them to apply for proxies (at this time, the same form was used for both). In an old people's home called Pine Trees, in St Ives, Cornwall it has been claimed that a Conservative supporter helped 17 elderly electors to fill in a form to apply for a postal vote, and then collected all the forms to take them to the council. The voters were recorded as applying for proxy votes, naming various people who were to vote on their behalf - all of whom turned out to be Conservative partyworkers. More than 70 electors in St Ives in 1992 complained that Conservative supporters had used their votes by proxy without their consent.

Related Topics:
Electoral fraud - St Ives - Cornwall

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Some old people said they had signed blank forms without knowing what they were. Some said they had signed nothing, including one man who was supposed to have signed a request for a proxy vote without being able to spell his own name. Four were dead by the time they voted. http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,487777,00.html

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In 1994, a novel was published entitled Game Ten, in which the Conservative victory at the 1992 election was deliberately manipulated by a powerful group of international financiers.

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