Woking Borough Council (WBC) will appear at the High Court later this month after an application was made to declare an election result invalid.
Labour hopeful Mohammad Ali, who came second at the borough council election for the Maybury and Sheerwater ward in May, has submitted the claim, highlighting what he calls ‘persistent electoral irregularities’ including the number of postal votes in the area and rejected ballots.
With the final vote standing at 1,088 to 1,072 in favour of Liberal Democrat incumbent Cllr Mohammed Bashir, Mr Ali, of Walton Road, Maybury, lost out by just 16 votes, and believes a hearing at the High Court would produce sufficient evidence for a recount…
He states: “My agent increased my vote by one by demanding a third recount with a new team of counters, which the ERO (electoral registration officer) initially did not want to do.
“In 2005 all the marked registers were lost so allegations of persistent double voting could not be checked and no explanation was given by the council,” he adds.
* Mark Pack is Party President and is the editor of Liberal Democrat Newswire.
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5 Comments
Mohammed Ali will get votes on his name alone.
Presumably he stings like a butterfly and floats like a bee. Wow – a recount with a new team increased his vote by ONE! That sort of variation in the count definitely suggests something odd’s going on.
No one likes losing by a few votes, particularly if they feel that there was something not quite right about the count, but this is still very ill-advised. My experience of two elections where this sort of action has been taken is that the electorate does not like a poor loser and takes advantage of a re-run election to punish the person who has brought the case.
I appreciate that this is a media report but it really leaves as many questions as it answeres:
Two reasons are given to support the application:
1. “My agent increased my vote by one by demanding a third recount with a new team of counters, which the ERO (electoral registration officer) initially did not want to do.”
Well, the ERO obviously ultimately agreed to a recount, and the result of that was …. you lost by 16 votes.
2. “In 2005 all the marked registers were lost so allegations of persistent double voting could not be checked and no explanation was given by the council.”
I’m sure there is a very good explanation as to why what happened 7 years ago is of enormous relevance to an election held this May, it’s just not immediately apparent to me.
Sounds to me like baseless speculation.
Unless he has evidence that there’s been fraud then there’s no grounds for a re-match.
Derby Arbouretum on the other hand…