 Balfour and Thomas Brassey, 2nd Earl Brassey, then plain Thomas Allnut Brassey, stood for election as the Member of Parliament for Christchurch in the October 1900 general election.At first Brassey seemed to have won by a slim majority of just 3 votes, but there were 11 spoiled votes which had not been marked properly by the presiding officers, 8 of them for Brassey and only 3 for Balfour, which reversed the result.Brassey alleged that there were electoral irregularities, although he stopped short of claiming corruption by Balfour, he did say that there were instances of impersonation and of voting by aliens.