Hackney voters in multiple polling cards mix-up

Problems: some voters have received more than one polling card

Problems: some voters have received more than one polling card

Voters have been sent multiple polling cards in today’s London mayoral and London Assembly elections.

The bureaucratic mix-up is the result of those already on the register signing up again to the new Individual Electoral Registration (IER) system using variations of their names and addresses.

Hackney voter Nigel Whitfield tweeted: “I suppose I should count myself lucky I was on the roll twice, rather than not at all. (Only voted once, though!)”.

Mr Whitfield told the Hackney Citizen about his double registration that came to light at the polling station on Nightingale Estate, E5: “I think it’s a council issue, as I got two polling cards.

“When I didn’t get confirmation of registration last spring, I registered again. Same NI number twice, same DoB, but one has all my initials, one missed the last one.

“So, more an error of the council not de-duping properly. I will try to delete one entry after the referendum – scared to before, in case both vanish.

“The polling station were actually helpful – they marked the second one as invalid, so no one can pretend to be that version of me, when I told them.”

Hackney Council has told staff at polling stations to be aware of multiple entries on the electoral register.

A Hackney Council spokesperson said the elections office had removed most of the duplicates.

She said: “Under the new IER system, if residents have registered more than once, providing slightly different details, they might appear on the register twice.

“We’ve been able to filter most of these out but some may remain.

“It’s illegal to vote more than once and poll station staff are instructed to check with our elections office where they see examples of this and note on the register where this occurs.”

In addition to the London elections, two council byelections are taking place today in Stoke Newington and Hackney Downs wards.

Polling stations are open from 7am until 10pm.