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Warrington council leader denies election fraud

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-59837258

A council leader has appeared in court accused of election fraud.

Russell Bowden, Labour leader of Warrington Borough Council, has denied a charge of giving a false address on his nomination papers as a candidate in local elections.
The 52-year-old also faces three charges of providing false information to a registration officer, but did not enter a plea to those charges.
He was bailed until 28 January for a first hearing at Liverpool Crown Court.

Mr Bowden, who was first elected as a councillor in 2010 and became leader in 2018, appeared in court via video-link along with his solicitor Tanveer Qureshi.
District Judge Nicholas Sanders said the alleged offences are "either way" matters and could be dealt with at the magistrates' court or before a jury at the crown court.

Mr Bowden elected to have a crown court jury trial for the offences.


Surely if you are putting yourself up for election to public office then giving correct information is of paramount importance

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Taxis Are Public Transport too

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2 things here, 1, Why give an address that is not your own unless you live outside the district that you are standing in?
2, How on earth do you think you can get away with it because to stand as a Councillor you have to be on the electoral register so it is easy to check.
Although you must be resident in the district to stand for election, once elected you can move out of the district as long as you still attend one meeting every 6 months. So in theory, I could now move to Spain and just come back twice a year to attend a meeting. In fact until recently we had a Councillor who went to Australia, due to covid he was unable to return, but because at the time all meetings were on zoom he was able to continue until 6 months after we resumed face to face meetings so he had to resign in November.

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Grandad,
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Got to be a lot more to this than has come out.

A Crown Court trial over a wrong address?

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IDFIMH

You do not have to be resident in the district you are standing for, qualification can be met by owning land or tenant /owner of premises for at least previous 12 months in the district you wish to stand for.

Sorry, I stand corrected. It is more usual to actually live in the district if you expect to get elected to represent the district.

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Grandad,
To support my charity text MAYORWALK to 70085 to donate £5

The problem with corrupt politicians is, they make the other 10% look bad.

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Former taxi driver

are you sure you haven't used too many zeros in that sentence

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Taxis Are Public Transport too

Join the campaign to get April fools jokes banned for 364 days a year !