Despite this year’s election being the most important in decades, polling day has been fraught with slip-ups that have caused some uproar.
One major mistake was when UKIP candidate, David Hodgson, was left off ballot papers at a polling station in the Darlington constituency in County Durham.
It is said that 89 of these ballot papers had been issued in the Polling station in the Harrowgate Hill ward before the mistake was addressed.
A statement was released surrounding the mistake, saying: “As soon as the issue was identified, corrected ballot papers were issued to the polling station concerned and voting continued as normal.”
However, UKIP are obviously displeased with this mistake and are now considering what action to take, with Mr Hodgson saying the council had some “serious questions” to answer, demanding to know who was going to take responsibility for this and how would it be avoided in the future. However the aspect that offended him the most was the lack of apology or admittance of fault from the Darlington Council.
Other mistakes of the day happened in Hackney, east London. Dozens of residents were unable to vote after their names did not appear on the council’s printed register. Apparently this is due to IT problems with the Government’s online system.
According to the council in a statement released, the problem was resolved with nearly all of the people affected able to vote after fixing the issue on the system. Now they are: “working hard to ensure that all those who are eligible are able to vote and we are confident that the vast majority of Hackney residents will be able to vote without any problems.”
This also follows a previous issue where voters in this borough failed to receive postal voting forms as the council was overwhelmed with the number of applications they received.
It has also been reported that there was a disturbance in a Portsmouth polling station, with a 28 year old man being arrested after allegedly arguing with a teller who asked for his registration number.
People in Bedfont also received an apology, with 3000 people being affected by a misprint on their Polling cards sending them to the wrong address. A shuttle bus system had to be set up to transport voters between polling booths in Southville Road and Bedfont Library.
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