Will this reduce confidence in the accuracy of the final results?
In the last conservative leadership race, a combination of an extremely close result and the fact that ballots were quickly destroyed after the results were announced caused many people to have doubts about the results, and contributed to further division in the party.
Now, there are reports that the reason for the delay in the 2020 leadership race results being revealed is that a ballot-counting machine is RIPPING up some ballots.
In a close race, this is a huge problem.
Which ballots are being ripped up?
Which region are they from?
Which candidate is having more ballots ripped?
Will the party reveal those numbers?
How will they adjust for the destroyed ballots?
Apparently, there is a recounting process, and it remains to be seen if this impacts the outcome:
So vote results are delayed. The reason is ballots “that can’t be read by tabulators either because they were ripped in the opening process or it wasn’t properly shaded in.”
So that counting is being done by hand and is overseen by campaign scrutineers. This will take a while.— Brian Lilley (@brianlilley) August 23, 2020
If the race ends up narrowly decided, there could be some serious consequences, and many members will be angry at seeing something that could raise doubts happen once again in the vote counting process.
Spencer Fernando
Photo – YouTube