Stoke’s The Sentinel newspaper reports the latest in the case of an election won by one vote with one ballot apparently missing:
The public inquiry, which began on Monday, looked into why 742 postal vote envelopes were counted before election night, of which 26 were rejected, leaving 716, but only 715 were accounted for after the official count.
The petition was rejected by electoral commissioner Richard Mawrey, who said it had led to cumulative costs of six figures for both parties.
He said the “missing” vote could be explained by mistakes in the recording of information on the records.
“They seem to be no more than the result of the miscasting of figures which were themselves correct or the misrecording of a rejected postal voting statement which has been discovered and rectified.
“It seems to me that we have eliminated the discrepancies.
“If the discrepancies are eliminated, there is nothing from which a court could draw the inference that a vote might have gone astray.
You can read the full report here.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
A new article for Central Bylines: We shouldn't laugh at Ladybird books but celebrate them
Reform's link to Iranian regime revealed
Library reopening - the video
Yes, I'm still in favour of making the House of Lords democratic
Slamdac
Matt (Bristol)
2 Comments
Presumably the paper is mistaken to describe the postal votes as being ‘counted’ surely they were verrified in advance?
Simon: when you verify postal ballot paper packages you also get a total (aka a count) of how many ballot papers have been received, which is separate from the later counting of the votes on the ballot papers. The paper is using “count” to cover the former.