Oadby Brocks Hill Ward Results - Borough Council Elections on 4 May 2023
Published: Monday, 15 May 2023
The Returning Officer has identified an administrative error in the results published on 5 May 2023 for the Oadby Brocks Hill ward at the recent Borough Council Elections on 4 May 2023.
The error, which affected this ward only, arose from a miscalculation within the reconciliation process used to record the number of ballot papers within a bundle and a batch for the ‘block vote’ stage of the count only (i.e. when an elector votes for all candidates of the same party).
For counting purposes, ballot papers are first put into bundles of 25 (“a bundle”) and then four bundles are batched into 100 (“a batch”). When the figures were entered, the total number of batches, and not the number of bundles, was inadvertently recorded. Consequently, the number of block votes was consistently reduced by a multiplier factor of 43%.
As the miscalculation affected the total number of block votes across all four candidates proportionately, the Returning Officer is satisfied that candidates Jeffrey Kaufman (Liberal Democrats) and Mohammed Latif Darr (Liberal Democrats) were and are correctly elected.
Following advice received back from the Electoral Commission today (15 May 2023), the full results for the Oadby Brocks Hill ward have now been republished electronically on the Council’s website to accurately reflect the above. The republished results are as follows:
Returning Officer, Anne Court, said: “Whilst it is unfortunate that this situation did not come to light until after the formal Result of Poll was declared and published, all candidates and their election agents were notified as soon as reasonably practicable about this isolated error. Advice has been sought from the Electoral Commission who are satisfied with the actions that have been taken and have raised no other concerns. Arrangements have been put in place to ensure this situation does not occur during the counting of votes in the future”.