Overhaul of North's voting system demanded

The SDLP conference at the weekend heard a call for the resignation of the chief electoral officer, Mr Pat Bradley. Mr Alex Attwood, a West Belfast representative, demanded the resignation along with a radical overhaul of the electoral system to stamp out fraudulent voting.

Mr Attwood claimed that electoral abuse was rife throughout Northern Ireland, and his comments implied that the chief culprit was the Sinn Fein electoral machine.

Mr Attwood did not go so far as to blame electoral abuse for the party's failure to hold its seat in West Belfast and its failure in Mid-Ulster and West Tyrone in the May Westminster election, but he suggested it was an important factor.

He complained there were bedsits in Divis Tower in west Belfast in which up to seven adults could be registered to vote. Furthermore, he knew of one three-bedroomed house in west Belfast in which 13 adults were registered.

Mr Attwood believed the electoral office was not doing enough to stop the abuse.

Mr Eamon Hanna from Belfast said electoral abuse had always been a problem but the difference now was that it was organised on a massive, strategic scale. He believed in West Belfast alone more than 1,000 people on the voting list were improperly registered.

"This is organised on a military basis. We have too many armies in this place. Whether there is a ceasefire or not there are people out there continuing the armed struggle by other means," he added.

"The abuse of the system is wholesale and barefaced."

Mrs Brid Rodgers, a member of the SDLP talks team, called for the introduction of proportional representation in Northern Ireland.

Because of the current first-past-the-post voting system, nationalists held only five Westminster seats, whereas in an equitable system they would hold seven and possibly eight seats.