West Midlands Police say they will examine evidence of alleged illegal "family voting" at May's local elections, after a Daily Mail investigation exposed reports of voter intimidation at 50 polling stations across Birmingham. The force will work alongside the Electoral Commission and Birmingham City Council, England's largest local authority, to review a dossier compiled from polling station staff detailing repeated breaches of secret ballot rules. The case has prompted calls for other councils, including Manchester, to check their own records for similar problems.

The dossier, drawn from reports by presiding officers, describes voters being repeatedly warned it is illegal to enter a booth with someone else or to tell another person which candidate to choose, with staff citing incidents including a man accused of "trying continuously" to influence voters and another alleged to have used "Islamic gestures, blinking eyes, hand signals". Some voters reportedly became "aggressive" or "rude" when told not to talk to each other in booths. Conservative peer Lord Hayward, who introduced the 2023 law criminalising attempts to influence voting in polling stations, said councils and the Electoral Commission bear the main responsibility for scrutinising such reports, and suggested similar issues may have occurred elsewhere, including at the recent Gorton & Denton by-election.