There is to be a General Election on May 6th, along with the local elections. You would think it had been called back in December given the fluster and bumph in the media. The snow wasn’t enough to distract us from the political machinations at Westmonster. That snow will probably become an election issue this year, if anyone remembers it – perhaps there will be some more before the election.

Brent East no longer exists; the boundaries were redrawn and now I’m in Brent Central. And no, I’m not renaming the site. This is Barmy Brent afterall, so why not?

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.

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…)

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 wanted to post this when I got home from the count early this morning but the brent.gov webserver had broken and was not serving the Election Pages. 404errr. That and they were still counting when I got home. And recounting no doubt. You can get the full results for all the candidates in each ward direct from brent.gov.uk as they are uploaded.

Queen’s Park, Mapesbury and Brondesbury have all turned Yellow – congratulations to the Cllrs in these wards. You’ve been trusted with them – look after them. Make sure that you continue with the effort that it took to win the ward as you work the ward.

Last year I was the guest of Team Green. This year Team Yellow have invited me to join the best lockin in Brent. Once again I’ll bring you the result and a pretty graphic from the floor of the town hall as the result is announced….assuming I don’t fall asleep! I’m tired now. Not from any intensive campaigning like the Teams… I’m a 6-week-new-dad! We’ll see if I make it through to the small hours again!

I can see people reading this blog. There have been 216 of you this last week and 48 readers so far today! Are you voting, Brent people? Who are you voting for? Why? Why vote at all? Got any comments? After all, it’s Your Council for Your Street and Your Services – Are you having your say?

Me? Of course I’ve voted! I’ve supported Team Yellow in my ward, Mapesbury (Look for the Bird!). When I got to my polling station I spoke to the Team Red vote recorder who was sitting outside – I was the first ‘young person’ through the doors that day… and it’s not like I’m an early riser! Where are the Brent Youth – have the biggest unsigned group in the UK not got their act together? Voting too difficult – i know, i know, making an x in a box…too taxing…..? Anyway – 18-24? Do you care?

Hit the comment button…….