Another Cock-up by the now discredited Electoral Commission

Mail mix-up hits post poll chiefs
Sep 14 2004
By Ross Smith, The Journal

The organisation overseeing November's regional assembly postal vote was last night mired in its own mail mix up.

The Electoral Commission sent the wrong reports on postal voting to interested parties in the North-East.

The organisation blames "errors in distribution" for the mistake, which saw people who gave evidence on the North-East experiment receive detailed assessments of what went wrong in other regions.

Three supporters of independent European election candidate Neil Herron were sent reports into the trial in the North-West, as was Tory Euro-MP Martin Callanan and one of his backers.
Another person in the North-East who raised concerns with the commission was given the full story of what had gone wrong in Yorkshire.

Opponents of the postal voting system said last night the mistake cast doubt on the commission's ability to manage 1.9 million postal votes in the referendum.

The Electoral Commission was asked to assess the postal voting trials which took place in the region during the local and European elections in June.

The North-East polls were blighted by printing problems which left staff battling against the clock to get ballot packs out before a Government deadline, and problems with a witness statement form which caused 18,744 European election votes to be declared invalid.

In its report, the commission said no future elections would use the same method, but stated it was too late to stop the North-East assembly referendum going ahead on an all-postal basis. Voters in that poll, however, will not need to complete a witness statement.

And after the wrong reports arrived, opponents of the system said it showed why it needed to be scrapped.
Judith Wallace, chairwoman of the North-East No Campaign which opposes devolution, said: "We can't even rely on the Electoral Commission to get its reports out, never mind the millions of ballot papers that have got to get to the electorate in the referendum."

And she raised concerns as to whether a similar mix-up could have caused representations sent to the commission about the ballots in the North-East to be linked to other regions. Mr Callanan said: "They're learning what everybody else discovered in the European elections.
"I think it's a useful indication of the dangers of relying on the post for essential documentation."
Gateshead Liberal Democrat councillor Jonathan Wallace, a fierce critic of the system during the recent elections, said: "This problem highlights the dangers of material going by post. It can go astray or the wrong piece of paper can go to the wrong person.
"Until we can get that sort of problem sorted then we have to give people the option to use a polling station."

The Electoral Commission said: "We're aware that there were some errors in distribution of the report. We've notified our distribution centre and they will be working to rectify the problem in the next couple of days."