Council software halts postal vote to China

Dr Hutton Ferris said the process had left him disenfranchised

A voter has complained his postal ballot will not be counted because his local authority struggled to send it to China.

Lecturer Dr Daniel Hutton Ferris said Newcastle City Council told him its software could not recognise the Mandarin characters in the address of his accommodation in China.

The council said it spoke to Dr Hutton Ferris and agreed to send the ballot to the address, written in the Roman alphabet instead.

But Dr Hutton Ferris said he had still not received the ballot. "If it comes now, I won't have time to send back in time," he said.

Dr Hutton Ferris, a political theory lecturer at Newcastle University, applied for a postal vote soon after the general election was called in May, as he would be in China on holiday on 4 July.

But after a week with no response and then a follow-up email, the local authority replied to say its software could not recognise the Mandarin characters in his postal address.

The lecturer explained he could write the address in Pinyn, a way of writing Mandarin Chinese in the Roman alphabet, but that using this system meant the ballot was less likely to be delivered to him.

The Chinese "postal system is better set up to read their own language," he said.

Dr Hutton Ferris said many countries did not write using the Roman alphabet and that the council should have better systems for sending out postal votes to these places.

The academic sent back his address in Pinyn to the council on 11 June, but has yet to receive a ballot.

He said the whole process had left him "disenfranchised" and said there "needs to be action taken on this".

"As a philosopher of democracy in my day job, I am appalled," he said.

The council said it had sent out the ballot to Dr Hutton Ferris last week and it was "now in the hands of the postal services".