Nearly 2,000 votes miscounted in Newham Council election

Officials "bungled" the count, one affected candidate said

Almost 2,000 votes were wrongly counted during a London council election, it has emerged.

A mix-up with people's surnames meant 14 candidates were given an incorrect number of votes during Newham Council's election in May.

One candidate's vote count rose by 800 while another's dipped by more than 500 after the figures were reviewed.

The council investigated and informed the election watchdog but said the vote's overall outcome was unaffected.

When the votes were counted, they were transferred to a declaration of results where the candidates were in order by legal surname, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

If the names were different - for example, a female candidate used her maiden name on the ballot paper - this could skew their position between the ballot paper and declaration.

Officials counted votes dependent on the position on the ballot paper, which meant votes were wrongly attributed where the order had changed.

Some candidates raised concerns that they did not get as many votes as expected, prompting the council to investigate and inform the election watchdog, the Electoral Commission.

'Bungled' job

Labour held control of Newham Council after all 60 seats were contested.

Labour's Joshua Garfield was awarded 807 extra votes after the investigation, which meant he came first in his ward rather than third, as he had thought.

He said on Twitter: "Honoured and thrilled to have topped the poll in Stratford & New Town. Thank you to the 3288 people who turned out to vote for me in May."

Rachel Collinson, a Green Party candidate for the same ward, saw her vote count almost triple from 387 to 1017 after the probe.

"Elections in the past have had no problem with the counts, but it has gone wrong spectacularly this time," she said, adding that the council had "bungled" the count.

The returning officer who oversaw the elections has since left the council.

A council spokesman said "additional checks" would be in place for a by-election on November 1.

He added: "Procedural errors occurred in the allocation of a proportion of the votes for some candidates in three wards, but in no case did this affect the outcome of the elections."