It's hard to know how to interpret a BBC report that a man has been arrested in Oldham for attempted elections fraud. Oldham is in one of the regions testing all postal ballots for the June 10th elections.
Publicising an arrest in this way could be an effective deterrent. It could also indicate that the police are being more vigilant on these matters. Alternatively the massive scale of these pilots could be encouraging more casual and opportunistic fraud than we've previously experienced. More attempts at fraud might well increase the likelihood of somebody being caught red-handed, which is notoriously difficult with postal ballots.
Jason Kitcat 