The 2007 Electoral Canvass is about to start. Once again we must all update our details on the Electoral Register. Failure to do so can lead to a fine of up to £1,000. Now that is what I call an incentive!

Electoral Canvassing – Your Questions Answered.

Posted after receiving a notification from Brent Council Electoral Services department.

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….

Here’s the process vote counting the votes as outlined by Matthew Mannion from Brent Council Democratic Services department.

Wednesday: All the postal vote that had already come in were sorted into wards, checked for validity (i.e. did they contain a ballot paper & declaration). We then totted up the number for each ward (they aren’t ‘counted’ at this stage simply organised into wards).

Thursday: The postal votes that come in on Thursday go through the above process; that starts at 9pm, and, as more came in from the polling stations they were added.

For the first round of wards: First each box was counted to ensure that the number of ballot papers inside it was what was expected (i.e what the presiding officer at that polling station told us it was). Once confirmed, the papers are counted into unsorted bundles and placed in the ‘mixing’ bowl.

Here is a picture of the ballot boxes ‘backstage’ at the count.

The total number of postal votes received from the postal vote checks are also counted to ensure they are as expected too. Once all the boxes have been checked and the papers are in the mixing bowl, the papers are mixed up so that no one can tell which polling station they came from and then dished out to the counters to separate into piles for the different parties and a mixed pile.

Whilst they are doing this they take out any papers that they aren’t sure about (i.e. that are likely to be spoilt) for the returning officer to check later. Straight party votes are counted into bundles of 50 and put on the centre table. The mixed votes are counted onto a mix sheet (as you no doubt saw). The totals from this are then added to the totals from the straight votes.

The totals created and checked then the agents are called in to see if they are happy or want a recount. At this point the returning officer goes through the spoilt votes to say why they are being rejected.
The results are then declared.