Election petition

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An election petition refers to the procedure for challenging the result of a Parliamentary election in the United Kingdom.

Controverted elections had been originally tried by select committees, afterwards by the Committee of Privileges and Elections, and ultimately by the whole House of Commons, with scandalous partiality, but under the Grenville Act of 1770 (10 Geo III. c. 16), and other later acts, by select committees, so constituted as to form a more judicial tribunal. The influence of party bias, however, too obviously prevailed until 1839, when Robert Peel introduced an improved system of nomination, which distinctly raised the character of election committees; but a tribunal constituted of political partisans, however chosen, was still open to jealousy and suspicion, and at length, in 1868, the trial of election petitions was transferred to judges of the superior courts, to whose determination the House gives effect, by the issue of new writs or otherwise. The House, however, still retains and exercises its jurisdiction in all cases not relegated, by statute, to the judges.

Petitions, which resulted in the election in a constituency being held void used to be common after every general election, but are now rare.

When an election was held void the House of Commons could seat another candidate, order a new writ issued to fill the vacancy or leave the writ unissued for a time, thus suspending the representation of a constituency. As the tolerance of corrupt elections became less during the 18th and 19th centuries, boroughs found to be corrupt could be punished by either changing the area and the qualifications for voting or disenfranchising the constituency completely.

[edit] Cases

In 1961, Tony Benn was disqualified from taking up his seat after a by-election by an electoral court because he held a peerage.

A recent example of an election being held void was when the 1997 election of Member of Parliament for Winchester, Mark Oaten, (Liberal Democrat) was contested by the Conservative Party candidate Gerry Malone. Oaten had clinched the seat by two votes, and 55 ballot papers had been rejected by the returning officer because they had not been stamped properly. Malone lodged an election petition in the High Court to contest the outcome.

On October 6, 1997 Lord Justice Brooke ruled that the result was invalid and the election was re-run, with Oaten subsequenly winning.