Newham council has been forced to correct the results from the May elections in three wards after mistakes were made in tabulating the counted votes.
The error was spotted by a Green Party election agent, who filed a complaint. The subsequent investigation involved the Electoral Commission.
Hundreds of votes were incorrectly attributed to the wrong candidates, but the mistake did not affect the overall outcome of the elections – the right people were declared the winners.
The issue arose where candidates who had used a ‘commonly used’ surname on the ballot paper. By law, the ballot paper must put candidates in alphabetical order of commonly used surnames. Then once the votes were counted, they are transferred onto the declaration of results. However, the declaration of results (and supporting declaration sheet) must place the candidates in order by legal surname. This can change the order of the candidates between the ballot paper and declaration where the surnames are different. In Stratford and NewTown, the Green candidate appeared on the ballot paper as Rachel Collinson and on the declaration sheet as Rachel Nunson. As a result her name was lower on the declaration sheet than the ballot paper.
When officials transferred the number of ‘split votes’ (where voters hadn’t cast all of their votes for the same party) on to the declaration sheet they failed to account for the changed positions and attributed votes to the wrong candidates.
As a result the Green candidates in two wards had their results significantly under-reported. In Stratford and New Town, Labour’s Josh Garfield was deprived of over 800 votes. Conservative, Christian and Liberal Democrat candidates were each reported as receiving hundreds more votes than were actually cast for them.
Nate Higgins, who was a Green Party candidate in Forest Gate North, said
“The truth is that though the council’s incompetence, there is now doubt in the entire foundation our democracy is based on. This only came out through the hard work of a local Green activist. Greens are holding the Labour one party state in Newham to account even before we’ve been elected to the council. It’s time for Greens to do it from within the council chamber. If they’ve bungled something as important and serious as our elections, what else have they screwed up?”
The correct results, and the variance from the originally published totals, are shown below:
Stratford and New Town
| Candidate | Party | Original | Revised | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gareth Benjamin Evans | Liberal Democrat | 1478 | 1195 | -283 |
| John Falana | Christian Peoples Alliance | 734 | 172 | -562 |
| Joshua Isaac Daniel Garfield | Labour | 2481 | 3288 | 807 |
| Andrius Kavaliauskas | Conservative | 1341 | 642 | -699 |
| Sheree Venessa Miller | Liberal Democrat | 741 | 848 | 107 |
| Rachel Anne Collinson | Green | 387 | 1017 | 630 |
| Nareser Osei | Labour | 2970 | 2970 | 0 |
| John Milton Oxley | Conservative | 639 | 635 | -4 |
| Terence Matthew Paul | Labour | 2821 | 2825 | 4 |
| James Alan Rumsby | Liberal Democrat | 790 | 790 | 0 |
| Shardi Claire Shameli | Conservative | 529 | 529 | 0 |
| Esther Smith | Christian Peoples Alliance | 136 | 136 | 0 |
Beckton
| Candidate | Party | Original | Revised | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Syed Hussain Ahmed | Independent | 598 | 598 | 0 |
| James Edward Asser | Labour | 1722 | 1722 | 0 |
| Ayesha Chowdhury | Labour | 1717 | 1717 | 0 |
| Chike Dunkwu | Christian Peoples Alliance | 142 | 142 | 0 |
| Emmanuel Finndoro-Obasi | Conservative | 454 | 296 | -158 |
| Joshua Darren Lindl | Conservative | 635 | 454 | -181 |
| Jane Alison Lithgow | Green | 152 | 428 | 276 |
| Constance Nasmyth | Conservative | 296 | 359 | 63 |
| Alice Olaiya | Christian Peoples Alliance | 144 | 144 | 0 |
| June Taylor | Christian Peoples Alliance | 193 | 193 | 0 |
| Tonii Wilson | Labour | 1445 | 1445 | 0 |
Green Street West
| Candidate | Party | Original | Revised | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hanif Abdulmuhit | Labour | 2991 | 2991 | 0 |
| Muhammad N. Chishti | Conservative | 696 | 696 | 0 |
| Mushtaq Hussain | Labour | 2715 | 2715 | 0 |
| Mumtaz Khan | Labour | 2591 | 2591 | 0 |
| Abdul Karim Sheikh | Conservative | 611 | 709 | 98 |
| Kamran Yousaf [Qureshi] | Conservative | 709 | 611 | -98 |
forestgatedotnet 
I don’t trust Newham election result.
Higgins statement is pretty fatuous as the rectification of the mistake benefited Labour more than the Greens in Stratford and they lost no votes elsewhere!
Significant differences to shares% of votes, in some cases.
There’s several blog posts I should update as a result of this, but I’m not sure it’s worth the effort for the tiny number of people who’d be interested!