According to the official election results, Wolverhampton South West saw more votes cast than there had been ballot papers issued.
At the count there were 40,160 votes totalled up in the general election in May. However, the official records show that only 40,094 ballot papers should have been in the count, 66 less than the number of votes counted. This is not a simple matter of a typo in the official records, because Wolverhampton Council has confirmed that these two figures are the ones official staff calculated at the count.
As to why the Returning Officer declared a result that was clearly wrong, that’s all rather a mystery. Both the council and the Electoral Commission tell me they are investigating further. It’s fair enough that the Commission is only looking at the case now as it isn’t its job to audit election results immediately after declaration. But quite when the Returning Officer or their staff first noticed a problem and what they then is a very pertinent question.
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10 Comments
It is actually 229 votes.
There were 163 votes that were not counted (rejected) taking the number of votes cast to 40,323.
Colin
http://www.colin-ross.org.uk
Ah, thanks for clarifying that Colin.
This is very, very concerning.
It will be very interesting to follow this – I just hope, with all due respect to Lib-Dem Voice, that one or more of our national media outlets choose to cover this.
banana republic
66? 229? Pah! Waltham Forest managed to count an extra 3000 Labour votes than were actually cast in High Street ward.
At the Crewe & Nantwich count we (the agents) were blithely told that “there are 50 to 60 votes missing, but they won’t make any difference to the result”.
It took an FoI request to establish the actual figure was 60, so why we were given this vague “50 to 60” remains one of life’s mysteries!
Interesting, Benjamin.Is that an absolute figure, or a rounded guesstimate? Is anyone looking into that? How was it done, exactly?
Why are the national newspapers and television media not jumping up and down in concern about this? Without a scrupulously honest election process, we would become a country where votes are bought. The Returning Officer should not have declared the result and there should have been an immediate investigation.
This is a far more serious issue than being a few votes out in the counting. It is the first step on the road to money buying power and influence and symbolic of how the principle of all citizens being equal could be undermined.
But surely the conclusion must be that the ballot papers must have been interfered with and that the majority may or may not have been a valid one. If the majority had been in thousands then I could understand the returning officer feeling able to go ahead but with a majority of only 691 I think it is odds on that this was a fraudulent election.
And then it could always have been just a clerical error!
No conspiracy after all.