Breaches include the failure to register nomination on time, failure to give required deposit, and forgery of signatures on the candidate's nomination form.
Normally, there is no need for any penalty for breaches such as the failure to register a nomination on time, or a failure to submit the required financial deposit. The simple consequence of failure to complete the necessary formalities within the time required is that a candidate's nomination is not accepted, and that is the end of the matter.
Where signatures are required to support a candidate's nomination, breaches present a greater problem since it may not immediately be apparent that any breach has occurred. The official responsible for administering an election may accept a nomination form without checking with each signatory. In order to provide a safeguard against the forgery of names on a candidate's nomination paper, the timetable for elections in Britain to the House of Commons provides a short period after the closing time for the submission of nominations during which challenges may be presented to the nomination.
If an opposing party suspects that some of the names of a nomination form have been forged (or if it believes that the supposed signatories are dead), it has a few hours in which to search for, and present evidence to the returning officer (the official responsible for accepting nominations). For instance, it may be possible to obtain information from the registrar of births, marriages, and deaths. Alternatively, it may be possible to contact electors whose names have been forged, and to persuade them to say so to the returning officer. If presented with evidence of this kind, the returning officer may decide not to accept the flawed nomination.
If a returning officer accepts a nomination, and if it later is shown that one or more of the signatures of those supporting the nomination have been forged, the election will not, under British law, be declared void automatically. Legal representatives of the candidate whose nomination was flawed are entitled to argue that the forgery did not materially affect the result of the election. If such a candidate has in the meantime won the election by a substantial margin, the law courts are unlikely to overturn the result.
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