Budleigh voting concerns; ballot boxes 'clogged'

CONCERNS that one of the voting queues at Budleigh Public Hall during the European and County elections last Thursday was abruptly terminated was due to blocked ballot boxes.

CONCERNS that one of the voting queues at Budleigh Public Hall during the European and County elections last Thursday was abruptly terminated was due to blocked ballot boxes.

Some voters raised concerns that one of the queues had to be merged into another - voters joined one of the queues depending on their surname.

But a district council spokesman said that one of the ballot boxes became clogged up - there were two ballot papers, one for the county elections and one for the European ballot.

The latter had to be folded several times because it was over a foot long - it listed 18 different parties and 85 candidates.

He said: "I can confirm that there were no problems at this polling station, other than some short delays due to the number of voters arriving at one time and the need for staff to deal with ballot boxes that became clogged with large voting slips.

"This only required a short wait while a special instrument was inserted into the slot at the top of the ballot box to push down the complete voting slips.