A picture of a woman voting was taken in Pakistan

A post on Facebook shows a picture of someone in a burka voting, with the caption “How Sadiq Khan became London mayor…Mohammed voting for the 10^th time today. Why Labour supports the Burka”.

The photo is not from London. It was taken in Pakistan during the 2013 general election there. You can see the Election Commission of Pakistan’s emblem in the background.

The Electoral Commission, which is the UK’s independent body overseeing elections and political finance, publishes data on alleged cases of electoral fraud every year.

Sadiq Khan was elected as Mayor of London in 2016, beating Zac Goldsmith by 1,310,143 votes to 994,614 after second preferences were counted. The Commission reported that there were 10 cases of alleged electoral fraud recorded by UK police forces in 2016 relating to the Mayor of London and Greater London Assembly elections. This includes all types of potential fraud, to do with voting, campaigning, or administration, etc.

“Personation”—which is when an individual pretends to be someone else—represents only a small number of the total cases of alleged election fraud. Out of all the votes that took place in 2016, four personation allegations led to one successful prosecution and conviction, and three cautions. We don’t know how many, if any, of these cases were related to the mayoral election. There were several other votes in 2016 including the EU referendum, local government elections, Scottish parliamentary elections, a UK parliamentary by-election and Police and Crime Commissioner elections in England and Wales.

The Labour party doesn’t mention having any particular policy on the burka on its website or social media pages.