Political

Electoral administration isn’t going quite as well as it should…

First, the good news: all the reports so far indicated a strong surge in people registering just before the deadline earlier this month. The Independent has some further figures to add to earlier reports. Thankfully, Havering Council with its hostile approach to people using the Electoral Commission’s website seems to be very much the exception. Whilst its electoral division has called “ridiculous” the number of people registering at the last moment, other councils have welcomed the surge of interest rather than criticised it.

Then the not so good news…

Allegations of postal vote fraud: the scale of the allegations, and the evidence for them, is growing in Tower Hamlets, as the Evening Standard has reported.

Misprinted ballot papers: rather a mess has been made of issuing the postal votes in Haringey. Not only have they gone out much later than in other places, but around 700 general election ballot papers had a printing error telling people to vote for no more than three candidates rather than no more than one.

More ballot paper problems: 2,000 ballot papers in Preston have had to be pulped and replaced after it turned out they had the wrong party logo on them.

Wrong instructions supplied with postal ballots: thousands of postal voting packs are being reissued in the Vale of Glamorgan after wrong instructions on how to fill out the packs went out first time round.

Missing windows in envelopes: in Kensington and Chelsea, around 14,000 letters have had to be sent out after a mistake with the initial issue of postal ballots. People had been told to fold the paperwork so that information showed through the window on the return envelope. One problem: they weren’t windowed envelopes.

Number of postal voters halves: in Northern Ireland, that is.

Error in statement of candidates nominated: over in Tower Hamlets, the statement of poll listing the candidates has an error on it. Candidates can choose whether or not to have their full home address printed or only the constituency in which they reside. However, in the case of one independent candidate they are down as living in “Haringey” constituency which has the slight problem of not existing.

UPDATE: Further stories reported in The Guardian.

One response to “Electoral administration isn’t going quite as well as it should…”

  1. I’ve got one more for you….

    I have often waxed lyrical about West Lothian Council and how efficient its electoral office is.

    I had a letter the other day from them regarding my postal vote as the Return envelope had been printed with an election date of 25th March 2010 – I wonder if this means that date was a serious prospect.

    I suspect the error might not have been West Lothian’s fault as the electoral roll is actually managed in Edinburgh.

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