Well done to the Tally Team

I blogged earlier in the week about the training we provided for our Counting Agents, with particular emphasis on sampling. We even want as far as running a fake "count" with a real ballot box filled with almost 2000 (dummy) ballot papers with the tables set-up as they would be at the count. This allowed the Counting Agents an opportunity to practise their sampling in "real time" in as life-like an environment as possible. 

A number of people asked if it was "worth the effort" and / or "was it sufficiently accurate" to be useful. To which the answer is a resounding "yes".  By 2am, 6 full hours before the declaration, I was able to call Tracey Crouch and say "you've won by 11,000". We now also have a detailed picture from each of the 50 polling districts showing were out strengths and weaknesses lie.

The skill is having Counting Agents who are able to remain focused, dispassionate and thorough even when exhausted. Our guys did a great job. 

Here is the summary of the sample with the actual result alongside.

Standing Proud for Conservative Votes

Highlight (or perhaps the low point) of all the counts I attended was finding myself in a heated debate with a Presiding Officer over a spoilt ballot paper.

A voter had drawn seven penises alongside the names of all seven candidates on the ballot paper. Six were flaccid, apart from the one alongside the Conservative, which was standing proud. The Presiding Officer declared it an invalid vote. I wasn't giving up without a fight. To me it was a clear intention.  I even found Case Law - previously a judge had accepted that a "happy face" drawn alongside the name was a valid vote. If a "happy face" is allowed surely a "happy willy" should be accepted, too. 

The row between a bloody-minded agent and a somewhat po-faced Presiding Officer raged on for several minutes before the absurdity of the situation got the better of me and I gave up the fight. The Labour candidate sniggering next to me didn't help nor did the intervention of a Lib Dem activists who asked "how can one be sure that an erect penis is a sign of approval?"

West Kent GOTV literature

Why my life-long Christian Socialist partner is voting Conservative tomorrow.

Tomorrow, Thursday 7 May, my partner for the last 13 years will do something for the first time. A lifelong Christian Socialist and former member of the Labour Party, Steve will be voting Conservative. 

In truth, this is actually the second time he has voted Conservative - but the first time was at the Rochester & Strood By Election when he would have voted for whichever party was best placed to stop Mark Reckless.  

Tomorrow he will be voting Conservative because he wants the Conservative Party to win and for David Cameron to remain Prime Minister. 

This is not some Damascene conversion. Nor has he switched allegiance under pressure from me or for a peaceful life at home. He remained a Socialist and voted Labour for 12 of the 13 years we have been together. 

His change is due to two things

• He wants to vote on Britain's membership of the EU and he knows that only one party can realistically offer that, and
• He simply doesn't trust Labour with Britain's economy. 

Many years ago I accepted that we would probably never agree politically and whilst we talked about politics we resolved to never let such differences divide us.  I am not going to say I am proud of him for changing his politics as I am proud of him regardless of how he votes. 

However, it speaks volumes for the state of today's Labour Party when a man as committed to Labour's cause as he was, who happily voted Labour under Kinnock, Blair and even Gordon Brown, now feels he cannot vote for them under Miliband and Balls. 

Ringing for Kelly

The first two teams manning the phones at West Kent Towers today - between them making 3,000 phone calls into Rochester and Strood to help Get Out The Vote for Kelly Tolhurst. 

Real movement back to Conservatives from previous undecided voters. She's going to win!

Landing on the doormats today!

Across West Kent today over 80,000 Conservative supporters will be receiving a personalised pledge letter delivered in a hand addressed envelope.  A great effort from our volunteers and parliamentary candidates. Thank you to everyone involved in making this happen. 

May I take a small sample ?

Today we ran training for Counting Agents with particular emphasis on ballot box sampling. There was a time when Conservative Counting Agents would automatically sample each ballot box, but this has declined in recent years, with increasingly counts being seen as a "jolly" or a social event  - to my great and often vocal irritation.

Sampling each ballot box not only provides the candidate with a heads-up but more importantly it pinpoints areas of strength and weakness, vitally important for future campaigning. 

So today, as well as going through the theory we also spent time conducting a "dummy count" with a proper ballot box, 2,200 dummy ballot papers, count staff, a Presiding Officer and Counting Agents armed with clipboards and spreadsheets. 

We sampled about 20% of the dummy votes in the ballot box and based on that relatively small sample we predicted the outcome to within 1.8% - proving it does work! 

Crouch's Tigers!

Joyce Gadd and Tracey Crouch with the first of the 38,000 pledge letters they packed last Friday

I want to pay tribute and record my thanks to Chatham and Aylesford Association President Joyce Gadd, and her amazing team of volunteers who work tirelessly from her home in Aylesford (now referred to as the West Kent Towers Annex).   

On Friday her team of 30 volunteers started work at 8am and by lunchtime had packed 20,000 pledge letters for Tracey Crouch.  Then, following wine and sandwiches for lunch, they started again and by 5pm had packed a further 18,000 pledge letters for a nearby target seat.  That's 38,000 letters packed in one day!

Well done Joyce and all the volunteers (too many to mention) for all you do for the Party. And thank you also to Charles (Joyce's long suffering husband) who I am sure would be very happy if he never saw another box of Tory envelopes, but smiles stoically throughout and doesn't complain. At least not within our earshot. 

Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells

There was a degree of tutting over the breakfast table when two vulgar purple UKIP posters appeared side by side in one of Tunbridge Wells' nicest residential areas yesterday. 

So outraged was one neighbour, he took revenge with a display of typical Tunbridge Wells politeness.

Hat tip to local councillor, Nicholas Rogers, for the photograph!

We must address confusion over postal votes.

This post is not meant to be a criticism of any of our local councils or their 'election teams' but rather a general complaint about the system and its lack of clarity. 

This week my office has been almost paralysed by calls and emails from confused or concerned voters regarding late or missing ballot papers. By Wednesday we stopped logging the calls as the number had reached 200. I am sure the local councils were inundated, too. 

The main problem seems to be where council and parliamentary boundaries are not co-terminus and where one authority is responsible for issuing local government ballot papers and another for the parliamentary ballot papers.  

For example:

Tonbridge & Malling Borough Council is responsible for issuing postal vote packs to all residents for the Borough Council election as well as those in the Tonbridge and Malling Parliamentary constituency. Voters in the Tonbridge & Malling constituency therefore received two ballot papers, one for the Borough election and the other for the Parliamentary election. However, a resident in one of the eight Tonbridge & Malling Borough wards which fall within the Chatham & Aylesford parliamentary constituency, you would have only received one ballot paper (for the local election). The second (parliamentary) ballot paper came almost a week later from Medway Council, who are running the parliamentary election in Chatham & Aylesford.

This issue alone has caused endless confusion and concern:

• Residents swamped the office with calls and emails concerned that their parliamentary ballot paper had forgotten or left out of the envelope
• Others wanted to know why Tracey Crouch's name was not on the ballot paper
• Some were angry over the additional cost of sending two ballot packs

Then there was the anger that many people had applied for a postal vote as they were going on holiday, but the later than expected delivery meant many had left home before the ballot pack had arrived and had been effectively disenfranchised. 

I am now receiving concerned calls and emails because many postal voters (a high number of whom are elderly or housebound) have sent both ballot papers back in the same envelope or accidentally sent them in the wrong envelope. 

It is interesting to note that we have received almost no complaints whatsoever from areas where the same council is handling both elections; these problems only seem to occur when one council is dealing with residents in a neighbouring borough. 

There must be a  better way of doing this for the benefit of all concerned, especially the voters who are at the end of the day the "customers" and whose democratic rights are being affected. 

For example:

• I do not see why the same authority cannot issue both district and parliamentary ballot papers then simply transfer the parliamentary ballot papers to the relevant parliamentary authority at 10pm on polling day. After all, the same process happens in reverse when the parliamentary authority verify the local government ballot papers and transfer them to the borough after the verification.
• It would also help if the much maligned Electoral Commission set a mandatory date when all postal ballots must be posted by 1st class mail.  This would enable residents planning a holiday to know exactly when the postal ballot would arrive and avoid hundreds of people being disenfranchised by late delivery. 

After the election I will be pushing as hard as I can for some degree of national standard regarding the issue of postal votes, in particular a set day when all councils must post out their ballot packs. Such clarity would (or should) be welcomed by political parties, Returning Officers and the public - and I can see no logistical or administrative reason not to do so.  Most importantly, it would enable residents going on holiday to opt for a proxy vote rather than finding their unopened ballot papers on the doormat when they return from holiday on Saturday 9 May, as will be happening to hundreds of local residents in my part of Kent.