Chief rabbi among voters in north London turned away from mayoral poll
Polling staff provided with incorrect voter lists, preventing many from casting their ballot
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Multiple voters in Barnet, a north London borough with the capital’s highest number of Jewish residents, experienced problems Thursday morning voting for the city mayor, due to polling station staff having received incorrect lists of voters.
British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said he was among those prevented from voting, The Jewish Chronicle reported.
An official for Barnet Council admitted the problem has “affected all 155 polling stations in the borough.”
In a message posted to its Twitter account, Barnet council wrote: “Please can voters unable to vote this morning return to their polling station later if possible. We apologise for these problems.”
Please can voters unable to vote this morning return to their polling station later if possible. We apologise for these problems.
— Barnet Council (@BarnetCouncil) May 5, 2016
Many voters expressed anger at the debacle and said they would be unable to return to vote at another time due to other commitments.
By mid-morning, as authorities scrambled to resolve the problem, Sue Cocker, Barnet Council media manager, explained that “the new registers are going to all the polling stations, and the final couple are being sent over – 99 per cent of them are there now. Once all of them are in place we’ll send out a message.”
Barnet Mayor Mark Shooter admitted that ““the lists were wrong – the lists that were sent out only had recently registered voters on.”
“This is a very rare problem. There’s an investigation going on; they’ll have to get to the bottom of what went wrong,” added Shooter, who is Jewish. “People are upset. We have to ascertain what went wrong and learn lessons.”
Polling stations were scheduled to close at 10 p.m. local time.
Conservative mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith told voters to try again later in the day, but Mirvis said that was out of the question for him as he was departing for the Netherlands the same day.
Goldsmith posted a message to his Facebook account at about noon local time that the problems were resolved.
The Times of Israel Community.