Recounting recounts

[Deleted]

Mar 2, 2017 17:17:30 GMT ColinJ said:

An odd experience stands out from my time attending election counts and is perhaps worth sharing.

At the 1989 European Parliament election for London North-West, the Conservative incumbent, Lord Bethell, seemed to have increased his majority from 7,422 in 1984 to 11,000. This was very much against the voting trends filtering through from other constituencies.

At the end of the count, the bundles of votes were piled on separate tables at the front of the hall allowing watchers from the sidelines to come up with the estimation of an 11,000 majority and this tallied with the numbers shared by the RO with the candidates and agents. The Lib Dem candidate, Chris Noyce, who was running a poor fourth, smelt a rat and instigated a bundle check. What followed was amazing, as the Labour and Lib Dem candidates and agents rifled through the bundles of 'Conservative' papers: bundle after bundle of Toms (Labour) votes were plucked out and held aloft triumphantly, to shrieks of amazement from the audience. It wasn't a case of the top paper being 'wrong', these were 100% Labour bundles!

As time went on and the discrepancies mounted, a football crowd-like chant went up: "Recount! Recount! Recount!", a demand for a full recount of all the ballot papers, not just the bundle check that was going on. This was eventually denied, despite the lack of confidence in the mechanics of the count.  Bethell's declared majority was exactly 7,400, down just 22 from 1984, a swing to Labour of 0.25% which made the result more credible with what was going on elsewhere. There had been a reduction in Bethell's lead of approximately 3,600 votes. I think that each of the 'wrong' bundles held 100 votes, meaning about 18 bundles of Labour papers had been placed on the Conservative table.

I am not a particular lover of Lib Dem politicians at any level, but I have always admired Chris Noyce for his actions that day in preventing a distorted election result being declared. He seemed to be the only person alert enough to realise that all was not well. Although the count was held at Harrow Leisure Centre, it was organised by Brent. At that time Brent had a bit of a reputation as a basket-case borough, giving rise to much shaking of heads, wry smiles and comments along the lines of: "It wouldn't have happened if Harrow had run the count."

Stories like these make this forum. Thanks Colin.

[yellowperil]

This general election has produced a number of  nailbitingly close elections going to recounts - North East Fife and Richmond Park, say and some others of great interest like Hastings and Rye.  A number of long standing issues around this like the the powers of ROs  to allow or refuse more requests are back in the spotlight. Would be interested to see if forum members have any local information or new insights into these questions from this time. 

[peterl]

Not to mention Newcastle under Lyme, Perth and North Perthshire, Kensington, all less than 100 votes in it. I generally trust the returning officer to make this call, however it would be good to see more data available so the need for any hard and fast rules can be assessed. I suggest the results of each count should have to be published and then the level of discrepancy between each recount can be known. It would improve accountability.

[AdminSTB]

I think that it might be best if we adopted the Canadian model and that all very narrow results are automatically judicially recounted.

[peterl]

Is that similar to a court supervised recount as sometimes follows a petition?

[AdminSTB]

Jun 11, 2017 15:21:50 GMT peterl said:

Is that similar to a court supervised recount as sometimes follows a petition?

From what I've read of the Canadian legislation, yes.

[connorw]

I'm told that in 2012 in the Birmingham Ward of Weoley, we lost by two votes but did not ask for a re-count!

[Deleted]

North East Fife really surprised me actually. You'd have thought after the Scottish Parliament results the Lib Dems would've minimised the Conservative uptick.

[Foggy]

Oct 21, 2017 19:04:13 GMT @conservativeestimate said:

North East Fife really surprised me actually. You'd have thought after the Scottish Parliament results the Lib Dems would've minimised the Conservative uptick.

I think something happened between May 2016 and June 2017 to alter the electoral circumstances, but I can't seem to remember exactly what... 

[Deleted]

Oct 21, 2017 19:06:49 GMT Foggy said:

Oct 21, 2017 19:04:13 GMT @conservativeestimate said:

North East Fife really surprised me actually. You'd have thought after the Scottish Parliament results the Lib Dems would've minimised the Conservative uptick.

I think something happened between May 2016 and June 2017 to alter the electoral circumstances, but I can't seem to remember exactly what... 

I do not think Brexit has an impact in Scotland in nearly the same way as in England because the question of independence transcends Brexit.

I guess Willie Rennie has a personal vote.

NE Fife and Perth & North Perthshire were the most surprising results in Scotland imo.

[jamie]

@conservativeestimate The increase in Conservative vote was relatively muted but they were obviously not going to stand still when they doubled their vote share across Scotland. Similar thing happened in seats like East Dunbartonshire, Edinburgh West and Edinburgh South. If you want to see a Conservative uptick, see formerly LD seats in the Highlands.

[Deleted]

Oct 21, 2017 20:17:38 GMT jamie said:

@conservativeestimate The increase in Conservative vote was relatively muted but they were obviously not going to stand still when they doubled their vote share across Scotland. Similar thing happened in seats like East Dunbartonshire, Edinburgh West and Edinburgh South. If you want to see a Conservative uptick, see formerly LD seats in the Highlands.

Yes but the LDs managed to take back East Dunbartonshire and Edinburgh West.

The LDs already collapsed in Edinburgh South in 2015.
Ditto Aberdeen South, Glasgow North and Edinburgh North & Leith. Their position in Edinburgh South is not really comparable to their position in NE Fife as the main opposition to the SNP.

It was a bad LDEM result here, relatively speaking.

As for the highlands the LDs were miles behind in 2015 outside of Caithness & Sutherland.


I don’t see them winning Argyll for a while.

[yellowperil]

I thought this thread had run its course and nobody had any new recount stories to tell so was pleased when I saw there were half a dozen new posts in a day,, only to realise that only the first related to recounts (or non-recounts, okay) but all the others were totally off-topic. What I should know by now with this forum, I suppose 

Edit: I now realise I had mentioned NE Fife at the beginning , so I suppose that allowed some justification, and  "totally off topic " may therefore be a little OTT. Nevertheless, the idea of this thread was to look at the mechanics of recounts rather than the political circumstances leading to the need for a recount in the first place (plenty of other threads for that)

[carlton43]

Oct 22, 2017 8:57:49 GMT @benjl said:

At what point is a recount sensible? I was at the Kirklees count at the last election and we were all surprised when the conservative incumbent in Colne Valley didn't ask for a recount, he lost by just 915 votes.

When your Agent and a few old hand counting agents all think there might be some mileage in looking for bundling errors because of what they have seen. Otherwise it is pointless to think there are going to be at least 1000 errors in the sorting of individual votes.

[The Bishop]

Oct 21, 2017 18:08:42 GMT connorw said:

I'm told that in 2012 in the Birmingham Ward of Weoley, we lost by two votes but did not ask for a re-count!

Maybe the candidate didn't want to win?