In another victory for Conservative campaigning, election night has been saved in Cambridge. Just had this back from the Chief Executive of the City Council, Antoinette Jackson, who is the returning officer for the elections in Cambridge:
"As you will be aware the Council approved the following motion in October:
"This Council believes that the interests of democracy and the country are best served if the result of a general election is confirmed as soon as possible after the close of polls. It therefore strongly supports general election counts being conducted on election night immediately following the close of polls, and requests that the returning officer takes note of this opinion."
As Returning Officer I have now had a chance to review the arrangements for election counts with the Democratic Services Manager and electoral services staff and have undertaken a risk assessment of the risks inherent in a Thursday night count, particularly for a combined election.
I can confirm that we will go ahead with a parliamentary count on the Thursday night as in previous years. But if it is a combined election then we will not start the local election count until 1pm on the Friday afternoon. This will allow key staff to have a proper break between the two counts and to minimise risk of error due to tiredness.
If the two elections are on separate dates we will do Thursday night counts for both.
I will be writing to local election agents to advise them of this decision."
The motion to Council was proposed by myself, and was probably the first time a Conservative proposed motion has been approved at the City Council for a great many years!
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5 comments:
Great result, well done Chris.
A 1pm start on Friday for the local count following the General sounds very sensible. I vaguely remember struggling to get up for a 9.30am local count on the Friday in 2005, having got to bed at 7am. All a bit of a blur, though. Let's hope they can get the General count done a bit quicker this time too...
The principle of a Thursday evening count was pretty widely supported by Councillors - most of the debate on the motion was about how slow the Cambridge count has been in recent years and if there was anything that could be done to speed it up. Hopefully the elections people will be looking in to this...
Congratulations on a fantastic result.
Well done, Chris! I hope the constituencies around Cambridge have the same success.
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