Last weeks’ (24th May) KTimes carried two stories about potential legal challenges to the results of the Brent Council elections. I don’t know what is happening with the query about the election of Cllr Pawan Gupta in Dudden Hill but I do have some news on the challenge to the count in Queen’s Park.

I understand that Brent Council have written to all the candidates in the Queen’s Park ward acknowledging the concern and the reasoning behind the querry raised by Shahrar Ali. Perhaps as a result of being part of a pilot of new electoral processes, Brent Council have indicated that they will not challenge any petition delivered to them. But there will not be a petition from Shahrar and others, primarily becuase Brent will accept the petition. How so? The costs of petitioning Brent Council in the High Court are prohibitive, even if Brent Council accept the challenge and agree at every step. Costs in the hundreds of pounds could be managed – and would be worth while in investing for the sake of knowing whether or not we were right. Costs in the thousands? in the tens of thousands? These are prohibitive.

I had thought that the Labour Party might have funded the challenge as the gap between Motley (Lib Dem, 1102 votes) and Nerva (Labour, 1059 votes) is but 55 – Could a recount have returned Neil Nerva over William Motley? Perhaps… Is it worth the £000’s to find out?

You can download Shahrar Ali’s final calculations and speculations on the results from the Brent and Harrow Green Party website.

A link to rockyf.com has been added – Rocky Fernandez:advocate and campaigner. Rocky has stood as an independent candidate in both local and national elections in Brent over the last few years. Most recently famous for the double-switchback manoeuver: joining the Lib Dems getting kicked out and then bitching about them online and in print (I’ll scan the letter from last weeks local paper later)…hummm, search for ‘fernandez‘ yeilded no documents…..

What news have I on the ‘missing votes’ in Queen’s Park? Well, I know that all the candidates have been written to by Shahrar Ali who has appraised them of his calculations and his investigations with Brent Council. I imagine that the next steps will be to petition the Returning Officer through the High Court as the Officer does not have the power to choose to recount the ballot. More info as and when I’ve digested the papers from the Law Courts…

In the mean time I’m holding a bucket for £2 coins to be dropped in: a legal challenge isn’t cheap! I’m encouraging donations for the fund. Click on the Donate! button. (pst…it’s on the left, over there…)

I’ve been reading more F Scott Fitzgerald recently as I’ve just discovered a collection of his short stories published by Hesperus. “The Popular Girl” collects together 5 short stories, each a gem, each of which, with dazzling brilliance and sparkling wit, disects Fitzgerald’s favourite topic: the American society-life. This came to mind this morning while I was digging in my visitor statistics for stats that stood out. The number one incomming search term (the query entered at a search engine that led someone to read this website) is Hayley Matthews. Popular Girl indeed.

Very little information about any of our Councillors on the internet, unless they happened to have been the Mayor or an MP. The Brent Council website lists limited contact information for each elected Council member, and the Brent Brain ‘blogging Councillors’ project had a limited pilot that does not appear to be running at this time. I recently worked with Neil Nerva to support him and the other Labour Councillors in Queen’s Park in the adoption and use on some internet tools: then he wasn’t re-elected so that internet based communications project has ground to a halt.

Hayley is a Brent Lib Dem, so why no information on her, or any of the other Brent Lib Dem councillors on the BELD website? The BELD site emphasises Sarah Teather over other elected members in Brent. With the Lib Dems now with the greatest number of seats in the Council, will we see an overhaul of the BELD website to communicate more from our Local Councillors and less from Sarah Teather? They’ve got www.sarahteather.org.uk for all the news from our MP after all!

It’s not William Motley, it is Antony Dunn elected in Kilburn.

The suggestion that a number of votes went uncounted at the local election is based on what was witnessed by Shahrar Ali on the night. There is no way that Shahrar could have seen all the ballot papers in for the Queen’s Park ward, but he did witness the first sort and count of the block votes and also the count of the ’splits’ and the paper with unallocated votes.

Here is a picture of Shahrar Ali (Green Party), Kwasi Kwarteng (Conservative) and William Motley (a Liberal Democrat candidate elected Councillor) at the count.

Why is the witeness testimony important? Well, in explaining the annominaly, Shahrar uses the difference between the likely statistically frequency of ballot papers coming up with unallocated votes and what was witnessed during the count. I’ll let him explain….

“In a nutshell, the problem is this: If you came across ten ballot papers in a row (in the largest, mixed pile) in which voters were consistently using only two votes that might be passed off as a freak occurrence. Yet for the count to be true, you would have had to have come across ONE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHT ballot papers in a row in which, on average, no body was using their third vote (or, on average, every other voter was using only one vote). Such a scenario would be dismissed as absurd and contrary to fact. Indeed, beyond any reasonable doubt SUCH AN ABSURDITY WAS NOT OBSERVED at the count in question.”

While researching the possibility of votes going uncounted in Queen’s Park ward I’ve discovered many interesting pieces of information. Well, I fiund them interesting anyway. Want to know how your votes are processed after you have mailing them of pushed them into those little black boxes at the polling station? Read more….

(more…)

Did those of you who stood up to be counted on May 4th get counted?

I’ve spent today researching the process for the counting of ballots and gathering information on the election result in Brent as I believe that there is cause for concern over the result returned in Queen’s Park ward. My concern centres on the counting of ballot papers with unallocated votes. let me explain…

You each had three votes on your ballot paper. Some of you voted for three candidates from the same party (a block vote), some of you for candidates from two or more parties (a split vote). Some people voted for two candidates: in Queen’s Park there were two Green Party candidates, voting only for them would have been a block Green vote but would have left one vote unallocated. If you voted for Rocky Fernandez only, you would have not allocated two of your votes.

In Queen’s Park, 3642 voters turned out giving a total of 10,929 potential votes. The results show 9,320 votes were cast, leaving 1,606 unallocated votes. Interesting…if these votes had been cast would Queen’s Park still be Yellow? The gap between Neil Nerva (1,059) and Michael Motley (1,102) is only 43 votes…I want to know more about these 1,606 unallocated votes. Does that number seem high to you? Shahrar Ali, Green Party candidate in Queen’s Park has been analysing the results as 1,606 unallocated votes appears “inexplicably large” to him.

The discrepancy is inexplicable on three grounds: (1) in comparison to adjacent wards, Kensal Green (387) and Kilburn (827); (2) in comparison to Queens Park in 2002 (513 on 25% turnout); and (3), more fatally, an approximation of the ratio of unspent votes to used votes that must have shown on ballot papers in the “mixed” pile (where cross-party voting took place) for the overall count TO BE TRUE. Unfortunately, that ratio is CONTRARY TO WHAT WAS OBSERVED. Therefore, the VALIDITY of the count is put into SERIOUS QUESTION.

Here’s his analysis of the numbers: Queen’s Park unallocated votes. Is it possible that a bundle of split / mixed ballots were not counted?

I think we are all voted out. When I say ‘we’ I mean the 37.26% that voted. And for the rest of you? election fatigue or political fatigue disconnected, not apathetic? we’ll see. so, wither bec?

much more to be done.

I write this weblog and others as I am practicing what I preach: web technologies really reach people. And for new web technologies that goes double. Static, maintenance heavy websites are no good, for the providers and the users. Many technologies are out of reach for individuals and organisations, by price or by size. Self-publishing tools such as wordpress (that powers this blog) and joomla (used by QPARA and BEST, two Brent resident associations) can empower people. Publish newsletters and write websites with a single effort. Mange mailing lists and distribute meeting minutes with information provided and updated by the user, not the valuable resource of a membership secretary or an administrator.
get internet tools.

comwifinet, the organisation I work for, has been working with residents associations and community groups around london, providing community groups and campaigners with internet based tools for communication. we provide training in a collaborative workshop environment to help with the adoption and growth of these tools.

need internet tools? get in touch rob@comwifinet.com

I’ve uploaded all the snaps I took at the count to my gallery.