Mayor blasts Tory MP's call for postal voting to be scrapped after election disaster

Bassetlaw MP Brendan Clarke-Smith, former Conservative Party deputy chairman, took to social media to blast the system – saying there was potential for voter fraud, leading to comparisions with former US president Donald Trump over his repeated claims that the last American election was rigged.

Mr Clarke-Smith’s comments came after a disastrous set of local election results for his party, which saw the Conservatives lose nearly 500 councillors across the country.

He wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “Postal voting – I would scrap it. What’s your view?”

Later expanding on his comments, in an interview, he said that postal votes undermined “tradition and making the effort” and claimed there are “a number of concerns relating to the abuse of postal votes and the potential for fraud”.

He said: “This is especially the case for areas with unusually high numbers registered and in cases where heads of households can decide the votes of others, or postal votes are going to unoccupied student accommodation or houses of multiple occupation.

“We even had to change the law because campaigners would go around collecting them.

“Whilst there will always be exceptions - such as for those with disabilities or for our armed forces, who already have a different system - allowing postal votes for everybody needs to stop.

“We are regularly told by the left that most people who use postal votes are elderly Conservative voters, so why are they suddenly so afraid of this proposal?.” he added.

Mr Coppard, who was re-elected as South Yorkshire mayor, with more than 50% of the vote and nearly 100,000 votes ahead of Conservative runner-up Nick Allen, said: “In Doncaster alone, 30,000 people voted by post.

"30,000 people with disabilities, with jobs, with family circumstances that meant they couldn’t vote any other way.

“And now, because they lost and lost badly, Conservatives like Brendan Clarke-Smith MP want to take that right away from you.

"Because when they can’t win fairly, they try to change the rules.

“Bring on the general election so we can get our future back.”