the election count

Written: 11/06/04

On Thursday we had a turn out of 38.6% in the district council election and today the count took place at Comberton Village College. Hazel Smith and I went in the morning for the "validation" part of the process, where they check the right papers went into the right boxes (it was a European election that day too) and that all the papers are accounted for.

You can observe this process and if you're smart you can get a pretty good idea of how the voting has gone. It was very clear to both of us that Hazel and Richard had won. The only question was who had the most votes, and neither of us could decide.

In the afternoon when the actual count took place we realised why: it really was a very a tight run thing between them, with only five votes separating them on the first count.

Looking down onto the count at a quiet moment:
officers on the inside of the horseshoe, observers on the outside

As a result it went to a re-count and the final result was as follows:

	Gerda Covell (Con)	318
	Alan Haylock (Lab)	176
	Christine Smith (Con)	246
	Hazel Smith (Lib Dem)	684
	Richard Summerfield (Ind)	678

So Hazel and Richard are elected as district councillors for Milton.

Hazel and Richard congratulate each other just after the result was announced

Some interesting things we noticed while watching the count:

1. People who voted Labour normally placed their second vote for Richard (Ind) or Hazel (Lib Dem), which you would expect I think.
    
2. Quite a few people voted for Gerda only, and not Christine, so Gerda was clearly benefitting from a personal vote.
    
3. No one voted for Christine alone.
    
4. Some people voted for Gerda and Hazel. Now this could be that they got the wrong Smith, but I suspect it's mainly that they knew both of them through school.
    
5. Bizarrely several people voted for everyone called Smith. I can see no logic in that one at all and neither could anyone else, but we saw at least five papers so marked.

Of the spoiled papers some were unmarked, one had all five crossed out. Two of the spoiled papers were amusing though. One wrote "no" next to four of the candidates and "nosy old bag" next to the other. Another wrote "nosy old cow" by one and "liar" by another.

The wider results for South Cambridgeshire District Council were as follows:

	Party	May 2004	Change	June 2004	Proportion
	Conservative	23	0	23	40.35%
	Green	0	0	0	0%
	Independent / Other	12	+1	13	22.81%
	Labour	4	-2	2	3.51%
	Liberal Democrat	16	+3	19	33.33%
	TOTAL MEMBERS	55	+2	57	100%

So the Lib Dems and the independents have both improved their position slightly. You can find the full results for all wards here.
 

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