Less than 24 hours until the polls open, the outcome of the election is far form certain, meaning every vote counts.

Yet will all these votes be cast legitimately? A number of stories have emerged of police investigations into irregularities in postal vote registrations.

Yesterday’s Independent carried an account of violence against one journalist who sought to investigate rumours over fraud in the London borough of Tower Hamlets.

Newsnight explored the issue further last night, grilling the chair of the Electoral Commission Jenny Watson, whose responsibility it is to ensure the integrity of the poll.

The Claim

In an interview with Jeremy Paxman, it was put to Ms Watson that there were not enough safeguards in place to prevent fraud.

“All that need happen now, if I have two voters in my household I could say there's another three or four here. As long as I can remember the date of birth I’ve made up for them and kept a record of what their signature was I'm in,” Mr Paxman suggested.

Ms Watson played down this portrayal of postal polling. But is it really as easy as this register for a postal vote?

Analysis

The application form provided on the Electoral Commission’s website, does indeed to only require the details Mr Paxman claimed were required. The form states: “You will need to give your date of birth and signature on this application form and again when you use your postal vote. This information is needed to prevent fraud.”

Of course, anyone applying for a postal vote needs first to be registered to vote. Yet the form for this procedure is similarly scant on security details.

So the concerns raised by the Newsnight host do appear to be based on the details required. But what measures have been put in place to ensure that these apparently minimal requirements are not abused by fraudsters?

In a statement, the Electoral Commission stated that since 2006 Electoral Registration Officers have had the power to check voter registration against other council records, while all police should have dedicated specialists on election issues.

But are such measures themselves enough to tackle voter fraud? Full Fact put Jeremy Paxman’s original claim to the Electoral Commission.

“It’s as simple as that and incredibly complicated. To get onto the register is not as difficult as it could be, as you could just fake a signature, and fake an address.

“But some of the registrations that go through are kept by a registration officer and if there’s a large number of people registering in one address they know is too small for that number of people the officers can go round and check.

“They have the ability to look into it themselves or contact the police to investigate,” a spokesperson for the Commission said.

Tower Hamlets, one of the councils where irregularities are being investigated by the Metropolitan police, has suggested more can be done stressing that electoral authorities in the borough had taken steps further than current guidelines to cut fraud.

Likewise, the Electoral Commission is bringing in a new registration system based on individual, rather than household registrations, due to come into force in 2015.

Conclusion

Jeremy Paxman’s damning summary of the means by which ineligible or even non-existent voters might play the system is a reasonable interpretation of the situation.

There are checks in place so that the system should fraud should not be quite as simple as he suggested, yet the large number of last minute registrations leave authorities swamped and struggling to check the late applications. This can limit the effectiveness of the existing safeguards.

In Tower Hamlets, 3,123 voters were registered in the last few days before the deadline, prompting the borough to call for earlier closing dates to be implemented to allow more time for sufficient checks.

Likewise the changes that are due to come in to the registration process can be seen as a tacit acceptance of the flaws highlighted on Newsnight.

Yet the spokesperson for the Commission insisted that despite the flaws, fraudulent votes were unlikely to change the course of the election.

“Even if you get onto the register the number of votes needed to influence the election is quite large so it would need quite a concerted large scale effort to defraud the system to the extent that it would influence the election.”