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The legitimacy of the hotly contested by-election in Gorton and Denton was thrown into doubt on Thursday as independent election observers claimed to have witnessed illegal \u201cfamily voting\u201d practices in which multiple people enter the voting booth, which some have tied to the constituency\u2019s large Muslim population.<\/p>\n
UPDATE 445:<\/strong> Far-left Green Party candidate Hannah Spencer has been announced as the winner of the Gorton and Denton by-election, with\u00a014,980 votes, followed by\u00a0Matt Goodwin of Reform UK with 10,578 votes, and Angeliki Stogia of the Labour Party with 9,364 votes.<\/p>\n The original story continues as follows\u2026<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n The special election, which was sparked following the resignation of disgraced Labour MP Andrew Gwynne, has been marred by the apparent outbreak of sectarianism, with both the left-wing Labour Party and Nigel Farage\u2019s Reform UK criticising the far-left Green Party for engaging in cynical tactics to court the Muslim vote, including running campaign ads entirely in foreign languages.<\/p>\n However, after the polls closed, more troubling accusations were made public, notably from the Democracy Volunteers independent election watchdog organisation, which observed votes in 22 of the 45 polling stations in the constituency, the BBC reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n The group said that they witnessed \u201cfamily voting\u201d in 15 of the 22 stations they observed. Of the 545 instances of people casting their ballots, 32 involved someone else being present in the voting booth, which is prohibited by law to prevent undue influence on an individual\u2019s voting preference.<\/p>\n John Ault, director of Democracy Volunteers, said: \u201cToday we have seen concerningly high levels of family voting in Gorton and Denton. Based on our assessment of today\u2019s observations, we have seen the highest levels of family voting at any election in our 10-year history of observing elections in the UK.<\/p>\n \u201cWe rarely issue a report on the night of an election, but the data we have collected today on family voting, when compared to other recent by-elections, is extremely high.\u201d<\/p>\n