Yesterday was unusually restful – output of news (& comment or analysis) on BBC radio was severely curtailed by a strike of journalists protesting at cuts in their pension entitlements.
So it was perhaps no great surprise that, at first, nobody seemed very sure when was the last time the result of a general election had been overturned on petition, as has that of Phil Woolas in Oldham & Saddleworth.
Petitions used to seem like a kind of political sport in the nineteenth century, with elections being most often overturned on the grounds of too much treating, or bribing, of voters. Petitions became much less common after the secret ballot was introduced – presumably it wasn’t worth bribing a voter if you could not check on how they had actually voted; some of them were probably dishonest enough to take a politician’s money & then go back on their word.
