The Speaker, Labour MP Michael Martin, is being investigated over the use of Parliamentary expenses to pay for taxi trips for his wife.
Labour councillor Rob Dix (of South Tyneside council) has been suspended by the Labour Party after being arrested on suspicion of ‘racially aggravated disorder’ after an incident last week whilst he was driving a van that involved a traffic enforcement officer.
But one good piece of news for Labour, albeit in a potentially rather controversial legal ruling – an election petition from the Liberal Democrats in Leicester has been rejected and the election of three Labour candidates upheld. Potentially controversial because the case hinged on whether or not failing to count half the votes in the ward is reason enough to re-run the election:
The High Court has dismissed a challenge to the legality of a Leicester local election where just less than half of the votes were mistakenly not counted.
John Fitch, the defeated Liberal Democrat candidate for the Abbey ward of Leicester City Council, claimed that because only 4,930 of the 9,099 votes cast in May 2007 were counted before the result was declared, the public would consider it “a sham or travesty of a ballot”.
Returning officer Tom Stephenson and the three successful Labour candidates, Annette Byrne, Colin Marriott and Harshad Dahyabhai Bhavsar, argued that the outcome of the election was unaffected by the missing 45.8% of the votes and that the deficiencies were not enough to render it invalid…
Mrs Justice Cox said there is not the slightest suggestion of fraud in the case, where it was agreed that the uncounted votes were simply overlooked.
She said the law is clear in that the courts should strive to give effect to the will of the electorate and to preserve an election, even if there has been significant breaches of the rules or of the duties of the officials, provided that the outcome has not been affected.
Voters of course have all sorts of reasons for voting, and – for example – many vote for candidates they know aren’t going to win in order to still express a view. Saying that counting all the votes doesn’t really matter is, in the extreme, the same as saying it would be ok to only count the votes for the winning candidates, ignore the votes for any other candidates and delcare the winners elected with 100% of the votes. It that wouldn’t be acceptable, why should it be acceptable to ignore half the votes spread amongst different candidates?
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12 Comments
So as long as they don’t find evidence of fraud, it’s ok not to count people votes?
Right…
http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com
Maybe I’m being obtuse, but how can they know that the votes wouldn’t have made a difference to the outcome if they didn’t count them?
Part of me thinks there must be more to this story, because it simply doesnt make any sense that the judge could rule like that!…
In essence the election petition gave rise to a recount. I don’t see anything wrong with that.
What kind of council is this?
Having looked at the original story I note the following: “Returning officer Tom Stephenson has apologised, saying the votes in the box were later counted – and the outcome of the election was not affected by the missing votes.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/leicestershire/6766649.stm
So it would seem the it’s right that the result was not overturned. However, I am puzzled that the story at the time makes reference to one missing ballot box of 1000 votes, whereas the story above has far more missing ballots.
Reading the Press Association report and indeed Cllr Steve Cooke’s post immediately above leads me to the conclusion that ALL THE VOTES WERE COUNTED and that the unintentional omission to count some at the proper time MADE ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE TO THE RESULT.
Clearly if it had made a difference the decision would have been different. In fact there wouldn’t have been a petition at all, just a recount and an overturning of any incorrect results, something which this Lib Dem pretender didn’t ask for.
The only question to solve now is whether John Fitch or disingenuous Mark Pack is the more foolish here. Both confirming the Lib Dem predeliction for stunts and shameless weaselry.
Fitch seems to be petitioning to win a seat AGAINST THE WISHES of the electorate because of a genuine procedural error.
As to Steve’s puzzlement 9,099 sounds like a huge turnout now that wards are more standardised at c 10,000. The missing 1,000 sounds far more accurate and around what you might expect for one of five or six polling stations.
Yet again a Liberal Democrat shows a systematic inability to relate to real life. The point of an election is not to record the numbers of votes but to name people to serve in office whom the electorate has chosen. In the Leicester case, the Returning Officer’s accidental failure to count all the votes in the Abbey ward led to the recording of an inaccurate result on the night, but the eventual count of all votes would have returned the same candidates.
What the petition meant was that the electors should be deprived of the service of the three councillors they in fact chose to represent them in May 2007, and obliged to return to the polls and vote again – not because of uncertainty about the result, but because the Returning Officer made a mistake. That is not in the interests of the electorate.
This differs fundamentally from cases such as Winchester in 1997 where the issue was that the count may not have picked the correct person to serve, and it was not possible to say definitely who won if everything had been satisfactory. Compare Kingstanding in 2007 which had the wrong winner due to Returning Officer mistake: the correct result was clear so the electorate was not required to return to the polls.
Chris / David:
Of course, it’s (much) more of an issue if this error results in the wrong people being elected, but if you think that’s the only bit that matters, you should then be happy with a system where all the votes of the losers are ignored in the result and each winner is always declared elected with 100% of the votes. I suspect though you wouldn’t be cheering to the rafters if that system was introduced…
I think we should show rather more respect for the electorate and not say, “well hey, your vote didn’t alter the result so it doesn’t really matter if it was counted properly”.
But then that’s exactly the point that I made in the original posting which you ignored in your comments. Must have been too busy coming up with the personal insults instead 🙂
Mark, you don’t seem to realise what an election petition is. The person who files an election petition is claiming that, if everything had happened according to law, they would have been elected. They wish either to change the result so that they are declared the winner, or to annul the election so that it all starts again.
In the Leicester case the result was never in doubt. The petition was challenging the election, not for a recount and scrutiny (as the Judges noted). This was an attempt by Liberal Democrats to overturn the clear wishes of the voters in the courts. There should never have been a petition; once the Returning Officer confirmed that the uncounted votes did not change the result, any legal action is pure opportunism.
Chaps – the petitioner was a Liberal, not a Liberal Democrat. The Liberals split off from the Lib Dems prior to last year’s election. This was one of the wards where both parties put up a full slate.
The Lib Dems publicised the correct figures early on: http://www.abbeyfocus.org.uk/page5.html
Remember the mssing votes were not counted in public and not in front of any of the candidates or election agents. Therefore Mark Pack is right to raise this issue of one of great concern. The judge had no evidence from anyway to prove the lost votes were cast in the way stated. The counting of any votes behind close doors is clearly against the spirit of election law and can clearly lead to people to jump to the conclusion that fraud has taken place- the judges decision is therefore a poor one.