About a week before every local election my councillor, a Pakistani, goes round to several houses in the area to collect people's postal votes. He sits in the front room as the man of the house gathers the purple and white postal vote envelopes of every registered voter in his family. The councillor then tells the man of the house where to sign for himself and the rest of the family. Once the signatures have been done, the councillor takes the envelopes, ballot papers and all, with him.

All postal votes gathered in this way come from Pakistani families. Many of whom would most likely have voted for him anyway. But to save these loyal and trusted voters from the hassle of taking two minutes out of their day to go and vote at a polling station the councillor has persuaded them all to apply for postal votes – votes which can be submitted a week before polling day.

In this way, he manages to secure a landslide victory for himself and his party colleagues well before the polls even open. I would hazard a conservative guess and say that he manages to bag over one thousand votes in this way.