More postal votes not sorted
- 15 Apr 08, 06:37 PM
On the programme last Friday I told the extraordinary story of the by-election in the Corporation of London last week - in the quaintly named ward .
When the votes were counted on Wednesday night it was found that 179 people had voted, and the victorious new councilman won with a margin of 27 votes.
But then, astonishingly, on Thursday, 62 postal votes turned up late where normally they would only expect one or two postal votes to be late. Because the votes were late, they couldn’t be counted and the Corporation didn’t even know if they could have made a difference because under election law the votes can’t be opened because they’re not valid.
Sources in the Corporation suspected the postal votes had been held back by the Post Office as a result of dispute in which the Corporation was accused of not paying it’s Free Post bill. On Friday the Post Office fervently denied this to Newsnight, insisting that they never withhold people’s post.
Now the farce continues another batch of 58 postal votes turned up late on Monday and a further 11 this morning (Tuesday).
So, in all the Corporation received 131 late postal votes so far, compared with the 179 that were deemed to be valid – and remember the winning margin was just 27!
As you can imagine top lawyers are now trying to sort it all out, but it is another shining example of the breath-taking inadequacies of the postal voting system.
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