A “spreadsheet issue” resulted in more than 1 in 10 votes made in Putney during the General Election not being counted, the council has admitted.
On election night, the result of 43,000 Putney voters were announced, with Labour representative Fleur Anderson being declared the winner.
But on Wednesday – two weeks after that night – Wandsworth Council admitted it has failed to account for an additional 6,558 votes.
Those votes broke down in the same proportions as the broader results and so the final result was not changed. However the extraordinary error – which accounted for 13 per cent of all votes cast – has raised question over how the count was carried out.
Under pressure, the Council posted a brief explanation to its election results page: “We acknowledge a spreadsheet issue that resulted in not all the properly counted and allocated votes being included in the announcement on the night in the Putney election count for the General Election 2024.
“This was identified and the figures on this page have been updated. This did not affect the result or the order of the candidates. While we are confident this was an isolated incident we are taking this opportunity to review processes with a particular focus on spreadsheet procedures.”
What happened?
The implications are significant. The Council has so far failed to give a proper explanation for how it failed to account for so many votes, what the particular error was, or how it happened.
It is also unclear where the missing votes came with: if they were from across Putney, or, as is more likely, were from polling stations or even an entire ward, that was simply not included in calculations.
There are seven wards in the Putney constituency, each containing between 8,500 to 13,000 people. The smallest is Wandsworth Town – which was only added to the Putney constituency this election are borders were redrawn by the Electoral Commission (previously it was in Battersea), and the largest is East Putney.
Without understanding what went wrong, or why it took so long for the mistake to be identified and announced, confidence in the election team at the council is going to be damaged.
Opposition demands explanation
The minority Conservative Party on the council has already asked for a full explanation, with its leader Aled Richards-Jones saying in a statement: “Previous elections in Wandsworth have been won by a handful of votes – three years ago, a by-election in Tooting was won by a single vote, demonstrating how important it is that every vote is counted.
“Yet today, residents have been told – without any explanation – that 6,558 votes essentially went missing during the counting process. Wandsworth residents deserve urgent clarification about how an error of this magnitude could have occurred, why it wasn’t detected at the time and the steps the council is taking to ensure this can never happen again.”
When Richards-Jones attempted to raise the issue at the Council on the same night the error was revealed, the (Labour) chair refused to allow the discussion.
