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Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

The problem did not arise to the same extent. I do not have the figures for the London mayoral elections, although those are available—for most counts, no figures are issued to show exactly why people’s votes were rejected. In the 2007 Mansfield mayoral elections, 892 votes were rejected at the first count. At 3 per cent of the total, that is significantly higher than the normal number of rejected ballot papers in an election. Of those 892 ballot papers, 483 were rejected because the person had voted for more than one candidate in the first column. Such errors are to be expected when people are told only, ““You’ve got two votes—you vote for one person as your first preference and one person as your second preference””. It is not surprising that a significant number of people vote twice in the first column. Only an inefficient voting system encourages people to make mistakes like that.