The UK's electoral system is "open to fraud" and should be changed to improve postal voting and voter registration security, Europe's human rights watchdog has declared.
The damning report by the Council of Europe says it is "childishly simple" to register bogus voters, and the system provides the anonymity to carry out fraud without detection.
But at the end of an inquiry by a Council committee of MPs headed by a former German justice minister, the report spares the Government the embarrassment of full "electoral monitoring procedure" - at least for now.
However, it warns that if "vulnerabilities" in the UK voting system start affecting the "overall democratic nature" of British elections, full Council of Europe monitoring - usually reserved for fledgling democracies from eastern Europe - will be considered again.
The Council of Europe inquiry team visited London last year, pursuing growing concerns about postal voting fraud following a case in Birmingham in which five men were found guilty of widespread postal vote rigging in the 2004 council elections.
The Government insisted the introduction of the Electoral Administration Act had closed off the potential for further abuses of postal voting, but the Council of Europe inquiry team said it needed to check that the move was having an effect.
The fact that the UK has not become the first western democracy to be deemed in need of human rights long-term monitoring over democracy will be a relief in Downing Street. But the report still makes uncomfortable reading for politicians used to chastising less-advanced nations for their electoral weaknesses.
It states: "It is clear that the electoral system in Great Britain is open to electoral fraud. This vulnerability is mainly the result of the rather arcane system of voter registration without personal identifiers. It was exacerbated by the introduction of postal voting on demand, especially under the arrangements as existed before the changes in the electoral code in 2006."
Those changes had enhanced voting security for postal voting but "other shortcomings and vulnerabilities remain".
The inquiry team said that it shares the view of "numerous" British experts that such vulnerabilities should be eliminated.
