UKIP's constituency association chairman, David Watt, was an observer at the count in Brentwood, Essex, and confirmed, in a letter to the local returning officer, that around 30 ballot papers had initial votes for "An Independence from Europe" which had been changed to votes for UKIP, presumably when the voters realised their mistake. These ballots were deemed to be spoiled. Mr Watt added: "There were no instances where the erasure was replaced by a cross in favour of any other party." Even more disturbing was his revelation that there were 369 unaltered votes for An Independence from Europe at the same count. He concluded: "Based on the spoiled vote evidence, we can reasonably assume that the intention of almost all of these voters was to vote for UKIP." There is no doubt that this was a crime against democracy and something that adds to the lengthening list of disasters for which the Electoral Commission has been responsible.

In 2009, the Commission approved a £2.4 million donation to the Liberal Democrats which was later proved to have come from stolen funds. In July this year, following a complaint from a Conservative MP, the Parliamentary Ombudsman ruled that the Commission was guilty of "maladministration".

The Ombudsman said the Commission "fell significantly short of what was required" about donations in cash and also flights. "It failed to ask for relevant information without good reason and so failed adequately to discharge its monitoring function," the Ombudsman continued. Obviously feeling itself to be above and beyond criticism, the Commission has refused to accede to the Ombudsman's quite reasonable request that it should apologise for its incompetence.

In 2010, it was heavily criticised for the handling of the General Election, including allegations of fraudulent postal voting, a shortage of ballot papers in Liverpool Wavertree (one polling station only had enough ballot papers for 80 per cent of the electorate), and failure to foresee problems at polling stations, which found themselves overrun as the 10pm deadline for votes approached.

For several years, there have been persistent allegations of bribery, intimidation and postal voting fraud connected with Tower Hamlets in east London, all of which have been brought to the attention of the Electoral Commission. The result is a current court case in which residents are seeking to overturn the election of their latest mayor, amid another swathe of allegations of electoral improprieties, including intimidation at polling stations, not to mention the fact that it took officials in Tower Hamlets four days to count the votes. The Commission has been long on written recommendations for improvement but short on action. One prominent local politician described the May elections in Tower Hamlets as having been "the stage for third-world village politics".