Will Postal Vote Scam Swing Glasgow NE?

A crafty plan to push postal votes could swing today's critical Glasgow NE by-election for New Labour, fuelling fears of a re-run of the alleged sham of a rigged Glenrothes 'victory'. Much rides on the outcome. Team Brown has pulled out all the stops.

A shocking number of voters have registered to cast their ballot by post, more than double since the last general election.

Glasgow city council has confirmed that 6,065 people have registered to vote in today's by-election, up from 2,419 in 2005, according to The Scotsman. That's around one tenth of eligible voters (62,475).

Suspicions over vote-rigging had been raised in the past as New Labour tends to benefit from a surge in postal votes.

The Scotsman has revealed New Labour's strategy to have every possible supporter signed up to a postal vote before the next general election. A "secret" election handbook, even shows the Party's day-to-day election timetable for signing up all possible supporters to vote by post.

The move has sparked concern among election watchdogs, echoing warnings of a judge after Birmingham council elections came under scrutiny in 2005, that postal votes are "wide open to fraud".

New Labour should win fairly easily in one of their safest seats. There are enough dirty tricks flying around Glasgow without another vote rigging scandal raising its ugly head.

But despair times call for desperate measures from a desperate Party building the electoral roll by increasing voter registration and to get crucial postal votes.

Bunkered Brown must think he's on a winner. Confident enough to hit the campaign trail with Steely Sarah by his side which smacks of Glenrothes chicanery. Would Brown and Sarah have joined both campaigns if victory wasn't in the bag?

Last year's crucial Glenrothes by-election result surprised many political pundits who predicted an SNP win, but the Scottish Labour Party held onto the Fife seat by six thousand plus.

Like many, the Orange Party smelt a rigged postal vote rat. A question marks still hang over around 7,000 requests made for postal votes very shortly before the election. But Glenrothes, which had a much higher turnout than anticipated, now has no records to show who actually voted.

The result was thrown into doubt after records of everyone who voted went missing, prompting SNP calls for an inquiry when it emerged all the marked electoral registers had been lost by the courts.

Postal ballots are available on demand, amid widespread concerns over transparency, fraud and exploitation. The system is wide open to abuse.

Now LibDems have begun the painstaking task of recreating the marked register.

All eyes will be on the outcome of today's by-election, triggered after disgraced commons speaker Martin quit in the wake of the MPs' expenses scandal.

The Martin mafia runs deep. Labour is in the blood in a deprived area left to rot. The SNP will find it harder to pull off a second shock result on the scale of Glasgow East when they overturned a 13,000 New Labour majority.

Brown is desperate to hold onto a parliamentary seat in his Scottish homeland after being routed by voters in adjacent Glasgow East. To lose one seat is a misfortune, to lose two a disaster.

Will Gordon get another Glaswegian kiss? Will the SNP suffer another Glenrothes massacre? Who will be the Weakest Link?

Defending a majority of over 10,000 should be easy. To lose such a safe seat would send shock waves round Westminster and shorten the odds on a governable Tory majority at the general election.

Brown has put his neck on the line with a final push for votes writing a personal letter to 4000 households in a last minute blitz on wavering voters. With the massive effort gone into voter registration and getting crucial postal votes, New Labour look set to win a very hollow victory.

But the final result is in the lap of the laptops, the sham of the postal vote to prop up the Party - and the will of the people.

Mid picture: New Labour's Glenrothes by-election victor, Lindsay Roy