04 June 2004
Frantic weekend activity was not enough to ensure that the official deadline for despatch of ballot papers was met by all the councils participating in the government's postal voting experiment.
Serious printing errors forced some local authorities to order voting packs to be reprinted, causing a last-minute scramble as officials struggled – in some cases in vain – to meet the June 1 deadline.
But the government insisted that 99% of ballot papers had been given to Royal Mail for delivery to electors by the deadline. As Public Finance went to press, a Department for Constitutional Affairs spokesman said: 'By 5am this morning [June 2], 100% of ballot papers were received by Royal Mail. People should be receiving papers over the next couple of days depending on the speed of first-class mail.'
The all-postal voting pilot affects the 14.9 million voters in the three northern regions and the East Midlands and is intended to make voting more convenient in an effort to boost turnout.
The Northwest was hardest hit. In Oldham, papers for the Alexandra ward were printed with the names of candidates standing in nearby Stockport and there were further discrepancies relating to registration numbers.
The council took over the delivery of the reprinted papers and a team of around 120 staff worked throughout the bank holiday weekend to deliver them to the borough's 159,000 voters. Council workers were required to visit the affected households individually to ensure that the correct papers had been delivered.
Oldham chief executive Andrew Kilburn was confident that the council had coped with the crisis. 'Thanks to the tremendous effort of council staff we were able to complete delivery of the ballot papers to the vast majority of households by early evening yesterday [June 1] and just two and a half days after taking charge of things,' he said.
'Importantly, we had help from a very unlikely source – Warburtons bakery. They supplied us with 100 bread crates and these proved a tremendous help in the sorting operation for the ballot papers.'
Stockport was also affected by the printing errors and ordered a reprint on May 28. A council spokesman said: 'Over 220,000 replacement ballot packs were printed over the bank holiday weekend, and issued to the Royal Mail within the statutory deadline. As a result, voters in Stockport have the full period for voting intended by Parliament.'
Constitutional affairs minister Christopher Leslie distanced himself from the confusion. 'This is a trial, testing new techniques, designed to make voting easier for millions of people,' he said. 'There were always bound to be stories of local glitches and technical difficulties.'
Voters in the participating regions are being urged to post their ballot papers no later than June 8. Kilburn said that in Oldham voting was 'brisk', with 10,000 papers already returned to the council.
PFjun2004
