Tuesday 12 May 2015

The Worst Election Result Ever

After getting routinely thumped by the Elvis Loves Pets party, where else can your vote go except ... down?


All is not what it seems. There are dirty tricks afoot. It emerges that the candidate and his wife claim to have voted for TUSC. I smell a rat.

14 comments:

howard fuller said...

If they don't find two votes will there be a divorce in the making?

Speedy said...

LOL

BCFG said...

Look at Fuller gloating from the election of a hard right, anti civil liberties party.

Still what can you expect from him.

Unknown said...

Hi Phil!

I wondered how long it would take you to pick up on the Rainham North debacle.

We're currently in the process of considering legal action as although we don't suspect foul play,, it was evident at the count the exhausted staff would be likely to make mistakes and it appears we have copped it.

The result completely goes against the grain of polling in the constituency, averaging 170ish votes. We actually polled nearly 3500 across the Medway Towns, a massive achievement considering I. 2011 we managed to stand in only 5 of the 22 wards.

This time we stood everywhere, an milestone only matched by labour and the Tories locally.

We're looking at this as an opportunity, Phil. Our cheapskate council tried to run an election on an austerity budget which has cast massive questions over the democratic process.

How many other ballot papers have just gone missing? Even medway Labour acknowledge this is not an accurate result, but why let the truth get in the way of a snide blog post eh?

Phil said...

It's my blog and I'll snark if I want to :)

But yes, you do make a wider point. We had the same sort of problem in Stoke. The MP count was a total shambles with two unopened ballot boxes and a load of unopened postal votes being found midway through the count. And the following day you had some council staff on during the local count who'd been counting into the early hours. I suspect Medway and Stoke are not alone and does show one of the "unforeseen" consequences of the Tories' demented austerity.

Paul said...

I suspect that the TUSC bundle(s) have been inadvertently tucked in with another pile.

Bundles are usually in 50s so it's just possible there were excatly 50 TUSC votes or a multiple of 50, with no extras, then it might not have been noticed.

Parties thinking they might win of course have counting agents to help spot these issues of human and understandable late night (or knackered) next morning) error. I spotted two strays Lab to Con once at my place.

Anonymous said...


Well, the "nulpunkt" candidate made Channel 4 news via Morning Star.

http://news.channel4.com/election2015/05/13/update-6133/


John R

Realist said...

Question for TUSC supporters: Why take legal action over this matter? I don't understand why it matters so much. If there is some kind of more accurate re-count it will presumably show that TUSC actually got 2% of the vote instead of 0%. Legal action will not alter the basic fact that the TUSC election results are atrocious. On that note, I think it's telling that TUSC supporters talk about things like 'over 3,000 votes polled in Sheffield' and do not mention the percentage figure.

Also, the increase in TUSC candidates in this year's elections has been generated by a greater proportion of Socialist Party members standing. It does not represent organic growth of the organisation.

Ruth said...

Hi Phil,

If you believe that TUSC are so irrelevant, why do you post about them so much?

Phil said...

Are four posts out of 145 this year really "so much"? It's an interest that whiles away the time.

ian said...

http://iriddell.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/how-much-does-your-vote-count.html?spref=fb&m=1

Anonymous said...

i dont see point in challenging it unless you can get a wider coalition of candidates to agree to do so. i believe the count i attended had errors to but none that would have effected any results. the problem is if you did nt have anyone monitoring the count to spot these votes going in the wrong pile at the time then you are on shaky ground, i can conclude it must just be the two votes that are missing as i cant believe fifty would have gone missing? think about it unless it was done deliberatley people would look for the tusc pile however small it was if it had gone missing but it is feasible two votes went missing.
finally im sorry this has happended to you as i know that you believed in what you were doing, it seems that standing as a far-left candidate is the hardest place to start from and thats not something you can take blame for.

Anonymous said...

Across Medway Council TUSC received over 3.4k votes spread across 22 wards.

The average TUSC vote in Medway was over 160.

TUSC also stood in all three parliamentary constituencies here.

In Gillingham and Rainham - where this election took place the average TUSC vote was 229.

There are three wards in Rainham. TUSC received 165 and 177 votes.

We were expecting a higher vote in Rainham North as the candidate is well known here, his family have lived here for a 100 years!

I estimate we got around 200 votes. But Medway council reckon we got an unprecedented 0!

SOme people say whats the point in challenging the results - TUSC get low votes anyway...but considering how angry a colleague of mine got at work when she was told that her vote hadnt been counted and you can see why it needs to be challenged.

200 odd votes not being counting is very strange...how many other votes from other parties? I know quite a few in the Labour party are kicking off about this as well.

I dismay at the author, who thinks this is an opportunity to bash TUSC rather than a Tory austerity council who have not counted anti-austerity votes and possibly others.

Why not do a blog getting at the real issue at stake?

To get a bit more back ground ITV reported it here:
http://www.itv.com/news/meridian/update/2015-05-19/video-would-be-councillor-got-zero-votes-despite-voting-for-himself/

Phil said...

Stop being so po-faced. Yes, it's a serious matter. And yes, it's still funny. If I can't laugh, I don't want your dreary revolution.