Independent Watchdog Slams Bedford Borough Election Counting

5.18.12pm GMT Fri 6th Jul 2007

An independent watchdog has slammed the marathon counting process which saw the recent Mayoral and Borough elections in Bedford descend into a fiasco. In its report on electronic voting and electronic counting processes used in May's local elections in England and Scotland the Open Rights Group, a nationwide Non-Governmental Organisation which works to protect civil liberties and prevent data fraud, concludes that it 'cannot express confidence in the results of the electronic counting pilots it observed' and lists a catalogue of concerns with the Bedford Borough count in particular.

Commenting on the issue, Liberal Democrat Councillor Dave Hodgson said:

"This damning report echos the serious concerns of the Liberal Democrats before and during the count. Of course, anyone who was present at the count is fully aware that it was nothing short of a shambles, but this scathing report from an independent watchdog serves to remind us of the extent to which the integrity of the electoral process was compromised by the count.'

"Like the Open Rights Group, we found it very hard to have confidence in the final results due to the lack of transparency of the process and the catalogue of mistakes, omissions and unexplained anomalies that took place. For example, the report highlights significant and repeated discrepancies between the number of ballot papers the presiding officers had certified as being present in a box and the number that were counted from the same box.'

"Another issue picked up in the report is the fact that votes were being adjudicated upon several times. No explanation was offered for this deeply concerning aspect of the count. Observers of the count in Bedford may not be surprised to read in this report that at the only electronic count to have seen a manual recount, in Breckland where the same equipment suppliers were used, a massive 56.1% extra votes were counted when compared with the number of ballots counted electronically.'

"At the meeting of the Council at which this electoral pilot was debated, we gave repeated warnings that it was utterly unsuitable to conduct this trial when we were holding our most complex elections ever, with both the Mayoral and Borough ward elections running side by side. Unfortunately, the other parties enthusiastically waved through this ill-conceived trial, which resulted in a counting process which had the harmful effect of undermining trust in the system and damaging the reputation of democracy in Bedford Borough."