A NORTH-west MEP is calling for last month's experiment in postal voting never to be repeated.
The Liberal Democrat leader in Brussels, Chris Davies, claims the small increase in turnout was too high a price to pay for sacrificing the "confidentiality of the votes".
He believes that sending ballot papers to all electors had destroyed the secrecy of the ballot within the privacy of the home.
Mr Davies said: "Postal voting turned up a wide range of problems from the ease with which electors' voting preferences could in theory be identified to the impossibility of the counting arrangements being verified at every stage of the process by political observers."
He also claimed the few instances of electoral fraud merely scratched the surface of the problem.
Four emergency polling stations were set up in Bolton just days before the June 10 election after thousands of ballot papers failed to arrive at voters' homes.
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