Saturday, April 25, 2015

Rutland County Council And Parish Votes Will Be Verified at Melton Mowbray Cattle Market Mrs Briggs forgot to mention that?

Rutland County Council And Parish Votes Will Be Verified at Melton Mowbray Cattle Market Mrs Briggs forgot to mention that?

Mrs Briggs the  acting returning officer for Rutland forgot to tell candidates and counting agents the correct timetable. She told us all the county and parish counts will take place at Victoria Hall
Oakham at 2pm Friday 8th May 2015

What she forgot to mention is the ballot boxing place at Rutland Polling Station contain
all votes for all three elections including parliamentary votes.

When poling stations close at 10pm on 7th May 2015 all these ballot boxes will be delivered
to Melton Mowbray Cattle Market. They will be opened to verify all three election votes.
Candidates and Polling Agent are entitled to attend witness the opening of these boxes and
the verification.

I ask Mrs Mogg at Rutland County Council why were Candidates and Agents not
notified of this and why does it not appear on the timetable.

She went away and returned telling me a letter will be sent to all candidates today (Friday)
She added I did not need to send in a email, I ignored this request and copied the
Electoral Commission. This is another example of Mrs Briggs slopping handling of our
elections. I assume once the votes for County and Parish are verified and stored until
the next afternoon the same verification procedure will be repeated again in
Oakham. Although their are transport issues for some returning from
Melton to Rutland on the 7th I wonder why the whole procedure is  not going to
completed at Melton? People have made comments about the security of the votes
from 10pm until 2pm the next day.

Yesterday I attended part of a postal opening vote session for an Independent and was told the
only way I could raise concerns was via email.

I have done, the rubbish used envelopes and voting slips at the same time.
The is a point in the proceeding where it is impossible to see the voting slips.

I have also raised this verbally.

Diane Baker and Debbie Mogg both responded you don't need to see
all procedures, not true the rule state no votes must ever be out of sight.

As for the handling and disposing of rubbish whilst transporting votes
to another area of the room, Mrs Mogg said it did not happen earlier
because there was designated person to deal with rubbish and if what
I and other did see had happened then it was due to the small number
of votes be handled?

Mrs Briggs the returning officer does not approve of scrutiny
I am told she advised the local LibDem agent not to put my
name on any of his lists as a postal voting agent.
He then lied and said he could not put my name on the list
at the request of a candidate because Libdem HQ policy is
only Libdem members can be agents for there candidates.

Shortly after Friday's session the Independent received
a phone message from Debbie Mogg. He is happy for
me to remain his postal vote agent I am sure Mrs Briggs
and her team will be attempting to find a way to stop
me attending.

If they actually concentrated on doing their job correctly instead of
constantly looking for ways to exclude people like me
then maybe the would not forget to doing it correctly in
the first place.