'˜Your vote will count' vow after print error

Fylde Council has sought to reassure residents across the borough that a printing anomaly which occurred on postal voting forms will not affect their votes.
Fylde Council is reassuring residents over a postal voting anomaly.Fylde Council is reassuring residents over a postal voting anomaly.
Fylde Council is reassuring residents over a postal voting anomaly.

The council has identified a printing issue, affecting a small number of postal ballot papers for the upcoming General Election on June 8.

This was the result of an error made at the printing stage, prior to the delivery of the postal packs to Fylde Council.

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The council said it has only identified nine out of 15,000 postal voters that have been affected and insists it will not impact upon a single vote or its inclusion in the ballot for the election.

Staff have been systematically checking all papers received – 3,000 of the 15,000 counted so far – to ensure none have a problem.

When the error was first spotted, there were fears it could render some votes void.

Kath Risely, who received one of the affected postal ballot papers, said: “On filling in my postal voting slip I spotted that the ballot paper number on the voting statement and envelope didn’t correspond with the number on the actual ballot paper.

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“This is one of the things they say you have to check otherwise your vote is invalid.

“It was one digit out and so was my husband’s, so I was left wondering if all the Fylde constituency ones were the same.”

But a Fylde Council spokesman said: “We are manually checking every individual postal vote received, to ensure that any mismatched postal packs are identified and will be counted in the forthcoming election, so long as they have been filled in, as per the instructions in the postal voting packs.

“We wish to reassure our residents that no voters will be disenfranchised from having their vote duly counted at the forthcoming parliamentary election as a result of this matter, and apologise for any concern that may have resulted.”

The Electoral Commission has been informed.