Election Fever or Flop?

It's not only the weather that's giving me mixed messages today. I've found it very hard to gauge the general atmosphere towards the elections today...

I woke up to a grey sky and switched onto BBC Breakfast to be told about fruit orchards and some new films and TV dramas. I checked my twitter feed, and by 10ish it sounded like Polling Stations across the country had been very empty. Nevertheless, the sun was trying to break through the clouds and I made my commute to work.

In the office, there was zero mention of local elections or the referendum all day.

By the time I was commuting home it had rained and it wasn't only the atmosphere in the clouds which changed. My twitter feed was tweeting tweets suggesting attendance at polling stations was on the up. It didn't seem so at my local station as I walked past though.

Then it chucked it down around half 5 in the afternoon. As soon as the rain cleared, I thought I'd go have a look at my station again, and to my surprise there was a small queue inside and a fairly steady flow of voters young and old trickling in and out the station like the summer rain trickling off the nearby leaves.

Now, I wait anxiously like many others in Stoke-on-Trent to see if it tongiht will bring us 'shephard's delight' or a heavy thuderstorm...

Stoke Council elections troubled with pre-election address problems

The Sentinel today reported how 100 houses on London Road have been caught up in an address mix-up. But it's looking like the problems aren't ending there...

Check out The Sentinel's article here: http://bit.ly/jc5WnN

Councillor Roy Naylor revealed on twitter further problems arising whilst visiting residents in Blurton today.

"Some addresses in Finstock Avenue have been placed into the New Blurton East Ward, but recently whilst delivering flyers for the Non-Aligned Candidate Nina Hulse, we noticed that these addresses appeared in the Electral Register for Blurton West & Newstead."

Follow Cllr. Naylor on twitter at http://twitter.com/BlurtonNews

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UPDATE MAY 3:
Cllr Naylor has updated his twitter feed:

"Just had a call from a reporter at the Sentinel Newspaper and it would appear I was correct on Saturday that about 35 homes on Finstock Avenue, Blurton, have been put in the wrong ward, they should be in the New Blurton East Ward but have been issued polling cards for Blurton West & Newstead. Apparently they can still vote but not for their wards candidates. Not Democratic at all."

And I have been kindly informed by Community Voice candidate Mike Barnes that similar issues are arising in Abbey Hulton & Townsend as well as other areas across Stoke-on-Trent.

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Stoke-on-Trent City Council have remapped their wards ahead of next week's elections. When the list of polling station locations (see here) was revealed, many residents complained of long distances making it difficult to vote in their new ward.

Now it seems some residents will be voting for their neighbours' councillors and in effect having a zero say in who their councillor for the next 4 years will be - after all the 100 votes caught up in the mix-up on London Road could have affected the result in a big way.

A similar incident occurred in 2003, when 30 homes in Harborough, Leicestershire, were sent polling cars with the wrong wards on. However, the Returning Officer in that case was able to send correct cards before the election. Read about that incident here.

Questions are now being raised if an election held without the inclusion of the 100 London Road households will be lawful or not.

Legal challenges may be raised by candidates who are not elected if they believe the number of voters affected by the mistake would have resulted in a different election result.

The Returning Officer Paul Hackney, told The Sentinel in the above linked article "Discrepancies will be dealt with immediately after the election."

The register for this election was first published on March 1 and it is unclear where any blame lies for the mistake.

If you know of any other houses caught up in address/ward mix-ups, please let us know at stokeelect2011@live.co.uk or post a comment below.

Location of Polling Stations

If you're not sure if your local polling station in Stoke-on-Trent has moved with the ward boundary changes this year, take a look at this .pdf document produced by the council.

It is the bottom file under the list: Related Files

Click here to follow the link!

Unfortunately it isn't ordered in a very reader-friendly way and includes rather confusing codes referring to 'descriptions of persons entitled to vote'.

Also it is not clear which of the new wards (or the previous wards) each polling station represents -especially confusing for someone who hasn't voted in Stoke-on-Trent before.

Hopefully a more understandable source will become available or more information delivered direct to the public.

Nevertheless, a good source if you want to check where the action will be (as long as you are familiar with Stoke-on-Trent geography!)