Poll Card Blunder Slammed
Oxford taxpayers have had to foot the bill to correct an error on local government election polling cards. Oxfordshire Council has been forced to spend £500 producing amendment slips which were distributed along with parliamentary election polling cards this week. Voters were instructed in the original card to “Vote for ONE candidate only”. The amending flyer stated that this was not the case. At the county council elections each elector can in fact cast up to TWO votes.
The error was essentially due to changes in electoral division boundaries and the number of councillors allocated to each. In the city of Oxford there will now be two representatives for each division. A review begun in 2003 found that of the 70 existing divisions there were 42 in which the number of electors per councillor varied by over ten per cent from the county average. In 16 divisions this discrepancy was more than 20 per cent.
From 2005 the electoral boundaries have been re-drawn to ensure fairer representation. The number of divisions has been reduced to 57 whilst there will be an additional four councillors appointed across the county. In the city of Oxford this will in fact mean there will be two fewer representatives. Oxford electoral services manager Martin John described the error as “very unfortunate”, but he was not concerned about any negative impact it might have on the polling process.
He told The Oxford Student the error was simply a result of “bad proofing”, and said: “I don’t think that it will affect the electoral turnout. There are much bigger issues on which people will chose to exercise their electoral rights. I hope that people won’t be making their decisions on the basis of such a minor error.”
In addition to the amending flyer which has been sent to the electorate, staff on the day will be reminding voters of the correct number of candidates they may select. There will also be notices posted in the booths to instruct people as to the correct voting procedure. John said: “We apologise for any confusion that’s been caused and we will make sure that everything else is correct. “We will try our best to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again in the future.”
Liberal Democrat Oxford City Councillor Peter Collins commented to The Oxford Student: “Clearly if there are flaws in the system it looks negative for everyone.” When contacted by The Oxford Student, prospective Oxfordshire Council candidate Alan Armitage did not believe it would reflect badly on the Council’s competence. “Given the current issues of postal votes I think the council electoral staff are under huge amounts of pressure.
“I don’t think that it will affect the outcome of the election at all.” Independent Working Class Association City Councilor Lee Cole commented to The Oxford Student: “It’s just a c*ck-up in a long line of c*ck-ups. The County Council need to get their act together.
21st Apr 2005