Council to go to court to seek permission for ballot paper recalculation

Ballot box: Representatives from Glasgow City council will be in court to ask permission to recalculate votes.© SWNS

Glasgow City Council is going to court to get permission to view ballot papers that were not counted in the election.

It emerged on Thursday that hundreds of votes cast in the Langside ward had not been included in the official count at the local elections last week.

Representatives from the council will be in court on Friday afternoon to ask the sheriff if they can view the ballot papers from box 139 and rerun the calculation.

If permission is granted the council intend to recount next week.

Returning officer George Black and senior officers involved in the count have agreed to forgo their fee from the election to pay for the recount.

The mistake came to light while reports on the election were being produced.

It was discovered that the Battlefield Primary ballot box in Langside was registered as having no votes.

It is thought that the box contains around 385 votes which could be enough to change the overall result for the ward.

SNP's Susan Aitken, Archie Graham of Labour and Liam Hainey of the Scottish Green Party were all elected last week.

It is understood that the "missing" votes would not affect the result for Councillor Aitken or Councillor Graham.

But Councillor Hainey could have his seat taken off of him in the recount.

Other candidates in the ward include the SNP's Alex Hewetson, Conservative Russell Maitland Munn and Glasgow's Liberal Democrat leader Paul Coleshill.

Returning officer George Black apologised for the mistake.

He said: "I am currently investigating how this mistake happened. Obviously I will keep you updated as more information becomes available.

"However, as the returning officer I am responsible for the running of the election and the count and I want to take this opportunity to apologise to you for any concern this will cause."

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