Council left more than 800 postal votes in wheelie bin, independent review finds

Human error led to more than 800 votes being left in a wheelie bin and uncounted by North Lincolnshire Council during the local elections last May, an independent review by the Association of Electoral Administrators (AEA) has found.

The AEA report concluded that a count supervisor, who was undertaking the role for the first time, missed 864 postal votes for the ward of Broughton and Scawby after the wheelie bin the votes were left in was moved and forgotten about.

North Lincolnshire uses wheelie bins to move votes around during vote counts.

According to the report, the count for the ward took place next to a larger ward, resulting in polling station ballot boxes encroaching on the ward's space and the wheelie bin containing the postal votes being moved without the count supervisor's knowledge.

The provisional vote was later accepted on 5 May, but it was at this point that the count supervisor discovered the ballot papers in the bin.

The report noted that there was significant doubt at that point as to whether the ballot papers had been included in the count or not, and the count supervisor "was too distressed" to confirm one way or the other.

The returning officer made the decision to take no further action at the time. Three hours later, the counts for all 19 wards were concluded.

Concerns were raised the next day by the Conservative Party that the outcome for the ward could not be mathematically correct.

The returning officer later arithmetically confirmed the votes could not have been counted and were almost certainly the postal votes for the ward.

This prompted the returning officer to self-refer the incident to the Electoral Commissioner and later saw the council's Director of Governance and Communities approach the AEA for an independent review.

The AEA's report determined that there was no evidence of electoral fraud and that the results in the other 18 wards in North Lincolnshire were unaffected and were legitimate.

"We would also like to assure stakeholders that in our opinion, the general counting processes employed by the RO at NLC are solid," the report added.

"Once the error had been identified, correct procedures were followed with regards to compliance with electoral law. There is no provision once an election result has been announced to count or re-count ballot papers.

"The decisions taken immediately following discovery of the ballot papers, and those in the  recovery phase, were arrived at following considered analysis of the options available, which was fully documented. At no stage were 'knee-jerk' actions taken, only considered and sensible resolutions."

North Lincolnshire has approved a number of recommendations set out by the AEA, including a review of its face-to-face training on the count process and paperwork for count supervisors, managers and deputy returning officers.

Adam Carey