Election Count incompetence

4.37.32pm BST (GMT +0100) Fri 5th May 2006

How difficult is it to conduct an Election Count - well in Wolverhampton, Birmingham and Barking quite difficult it would appear.

Last nights, or more accurately this morning's Election Count in Wolverhampton was far from the most smoothly run that I had ever been too. Apart from the two hour 'postal vote' gap our Ward Returning Officer (or whatever he was calling himself) had no intention of showing the Candidates and/or Agents the spoiled or doubtful ballots, he also did not give us the result before trying to have it read out, fortunately I queried both of these and managed to get a bundle check before the result was announced.

In Birmingham and in Barking the Returning Officers declared a result and then realised that they may have made a mistake. How difficult is it to add up some numbers and read them out. I think the Birmingham result relates to postal votes and the Barking the Returning Officer missed 1,000 votes off the BNP's figure. Both Returning Officers should be sacked - these results will now have to have a court intervene to ensure the correct result can be declared.