Changed format linked to 12% of spoiled ballots

In total 579 votes were spoiled across the constituency and as many as 12% of these were due to the changed format of the ballot paper according to the constituency’s returning officer.
In previous elections, candidates were listed alphabetically in a single row but with 16 candidates on the ballot, for the first time in the county, candidates were divided into two rows on the ballot paper.
At Saturday’s count, just under 1% of the poll was deemed invalid, a jump of 0.3% on 2007 when 385 of the 56,770 poll was spoiled.
This increase in the number of invalid votes from 385 to 579 is due in part to deliberate defacement of ballots by disgruntled voters but also due to confusion among the electorate faced with two rows of candidates, each with a box to the left of their name for their party logo and one to the right for indicating preference. In the case of independents, of which there were nine in the Clare constituency, the box to the left was left blank.
According to retuning officer in Clare Pat Wallace, “about 12% of the spoiled papers were due to the double voting on each side of the ballot paper because of the changed format.”
These votes “did not indicate a preference” instead they had a ‘1’ beside a candidate on the left and a ‘1’ beside one on the right and so on down to eight.
“The printers decided that the most manageable thing was to have two sets of eight beside each other instead of the usual long ballot paper with each candidate alphabetically placed one under the other. Having a very long paper in its place with one candidate under the other might have posed other difficulties and I think the ballot papers in my opinion were very clear and manageable,” Mr Wallace stated.
As Saturday’s count continued, it took some time to decide whether certain votes, deemed doubtful by the counters, were valid or invalid.
“We separate the votes that are unmarked by our staff which is a difficult thing for us. Of those, this time there were 18. That is a serious matter for the presiding officer, not to stamp one. Some ballot papers have no writing on them, others are defaced with writing on it or an x or a zero beside all candidates. Other members of the electorate choose to add their own candidate to the official list and write one beside them. Others are spoiled because of a lack of preference and all the agents look at those. We separate the votes into groups before inviting the candidates’ agents in to inspect them. We put the very doubtful ones together, the ones that are not as doubtful and the quite clear ones into separate piles then we go through these with the agents of the candidates and generally we don’t have any real disagreements about ballots that we believe are valid or invalid as the case may be,” Mr Wallace commented.
“The candidates’ agents want to put in valid votes, not just personal valid votes. It comes down to my decision in the end but they work with me to narrow down the number of spoiled votes,” he continued.
Mr Wallace believes that further education on the Proportional Representation system could help to reduce the number of spoiled or invalid votes.
“It doesn’t do any harm to explain PR in simple terms. It is easy to grasp except for one aspect, the distribution of surpluses. Most people understand that they vote in sequence, and that when a candidate is eliminated their votes are redistributed but it is a surplus that is being distributed they find that a little harder,” Mr Wallace concluded.