Thursday 29 April 2010

Boundary changes blunder - latest

Update on the boundary changes... I happened to speak to Stephen McNamara, the Returning Officer, today, and it looks as if they are reasonably confident that the situation can be resolved. It seems that most, but not all, postal voters in Lawrence Hill and Easton have been given the wrong ballot papers. Those who have recently moved into those wards, or have recently applied for a postal vote, have been given the correct ballot papers, i.e. for Bristol West.

The Council will be able to tell whether someone has voted twice, so if anyone in those wards has received and returned a Bristol West ballot, and then, say, gone off on holiday before receiving the reissued ballot paper, (see below for a possible scenario), then that will still count. The only people who will miss out will be those who have mistakenly received a Bristol East ballot paper, and go away on hols before the replacement arrives. However, the Council are hand-delivering the replacements and want to get them all out before the weekend (not May 4th as they stated in their letter). There is no guarantee given as to how soon before polling day postal vote ballot papers have to be sent out anyway, but the guideline is at least four working days, which will be met is they are received by Friday. So... the only problem will be if the result in Bristol West is close, i.e. within a few hundred votes.

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