Local Conservatives have today expressed their concern at an “alarming” error on the part of Wandsworth Council that saw a total of 6,558 votes go missing during the recent general election count.
On election night, a set of results was declared suggesting a total of 42,737 votes had been cast in the Putney constituency on a turnout of 59%. Unexpectedly revised figures issued today, however, show that an additional 6,558 votes failed to be correctly tallied on the evening, with the true turnout being 68%. This means that roughly 1 in 10 votes cast during the General Election in Putney were unaccounted for until today.
The results the public heard on the night were not how they voted. Subsequently, the public, Parliament, the media, other bodies and researchers were all given the wrong official results. Yet the Council has done nothing to alert them or correct the wider records that the public see. Even its own “Putney results” webpage remains wrong.
The official declaration of results has been silently changed on the Council’s website without any acknowledgment or public statement explaining how the disparity occurred.
While it does not appear that the failure to include all of the votes cast in the declared totals would have altered the outcome of this election, this could easily have been the case had the election been close.
Cllr Aled Richards-Jones, the leader of the opposition Conservative group on the Council, said:
“The Council’s Labour Administration must stand up and take responsibility for – and, crucially, explain – this fiasco.
“In any democracy, people need to have confidence their votes will be counted. Previous elections in Wandsworth have been won by a handful of votes – three years ago, a by-election in Tooting was won by a single vote, demonstrating how important it is that every vote is counted.
“Yet today, residents have been told – without any explanation – that 6,558 votes essentially went missing during the counting process.
“Wandsworth residents deserve urgent clarification about how an error of this magnitude could have occurred, why it wasn’t detected at the time and the steps the Council is taking to ensure this can never happen again.
“Above all, the secrecy surrounding this needs to stop, and the Council needs to explain itself.
“At a time when trust in democracy needs to be strengthened, the Council is severely undermining that trust in Wandsworth”
