“Last minute” voting could delay election results
“Last minute” postal votes could delay the results of next year’s council elections, an electoral chief has claimed.
Malcolm Dumper of the Association of Electoral Administrators says that new regulations aimed at stamping out postal vote fraud could see delays in the counting of votes.
He says that while postal votes for next May’s council election will give voters the chance to make their vote early, an increasing number of voters are submitting their votes using “last-minute” Royal Mail delivery.
“In many rural local government areas, the delivery of these postal votes to count centres could take as much as one to one-and-a-half hours, with the consequence that the processing of these may well not begin until midnight or thereafter,” he said.
Mr Dumper says that in a recent survey over 80 percent of electoral officers expressed concern over the impact that changes to the Electoral Administration Act will have to the counting of votes.
Next year’s May elections will see the majority of borough, district and unitary councils in England go to the polls.
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