The problem of postal votes arriving too late has doubled in size

Newly published figures for the 2014 European elections show that:

A total of 51,790 postal votes arrived too late to be counted in this year’s European Parliament elections.

The votes – about 1% of the five million postal votes in May’s election – were received after the polls closed.

1% is a low figure but it is also just over a doubling of the figure from the 2012 Police and Crime Commission elections.*

If this growth becomes a trend, late postal votes will become rather a serious problem rather swiftly.

* I don’t have figures for 2013.