Ivan Balhatchet’s registration at two adddresses was an administrative error of the local authority, the Independent office for Police Conduct has found
He’s fortunate that the error is acknowledged and someone else is acknowledged to be at blame.
In my own experience that is not always the behaviour and errors are covered up that are due to errors on the part of council officers and police officers and victims of this incompetence are gaslighted and victim blamed.
I’m glad he has the right outcome in this instance and hope that he will gain insight into how it feels to be portrayed as having done something wrong because of recording errors and will have the integrity to look more closely at his own officers behaviours.
As a regular political campaigner I often notice errors like streets arrayed wrongly as in streets arrayed in straight numerical order are shown as odds and evens. Also name duplications.
The council really need to ensure that this work is done really to a high standard to avoid unnecessary investigations such as this turned out to be.
What I did notice on the IOPC reply they sent to me as the person who recorded it is that the digital version was up to date and correct and more recent than the paper version that was printed and then amended once the error was picked up. This is the only bit that made me wary as this went on for several years with the error being duplicated and evades the issue of how the printed register is what generates the polling cards so for an input error that was visible on several consecutive years, this WOULD have resulted in extra polling cards being sent and this is glossed over showing the ease with which some at the council could "make an error" and zero checks and balances are performed to identify or correct this.
Its a positive turn that complaints with evidence indicating something untoward are now actually being investigated.
Ivan Balhatchet has been proven to not have actively engaged in any voting fraud and I accept the findings as thorough.
Its just a shame that had Ivan Balhatchet not covered up misfeasance amongst his officers, he might not have brought so much scrutiny and attention to himself and could have been taken at his word when he said he did nothing wrong.
He’s fortunate that the error is acknowledged and someone else is acknowledged to be at blame.
In my own experience that is not always the behaviour and errors are covered up that are due to errors on the part of council officers and police officers and victims of this incompetence are gaslighted and victim blamed.
I’m glad he has the right outcome in this instance and hope that he will gain insight into how it feels to be portrayed as having done something wrong because of recording errors and will have the integrity to look more closely at his own officers behaviours.
As a regular political campaigner I often notice errors like streets arrayed wrongly as in streets arrayed in straight numerical order are shown as odds and evens. Also name duplications.
The council really need to ensure that this work is done really to a high standard to avoid unnecessary investigations such as this turned out to be.
What I did notice on the IOPC reply they sent to me as the person who recorded it is that the digital version was up to date and correct and more recent than the paper version that was printed and then amended once the error was picked up. This is the only bit that made me wary as this went on for several years with the error being duplicated and evades the issue of how the printed register is what generates the polling cards so for an input error that was visible on several consecutive years, this WOULD have resulted in extra polling cards being sent and this is glossed over showing the ease with which some at the council could "make an error" and zero checks and balances are performed to identify or correct this.
Its a positive turn that complaints with evidence indicating something untoward are now actually being investigated.
Ivan Balhatchet has been proven to not have actively engaged in any voting fraud and I accept the findings as thorough.
Its just a shame that had Ivan Balhatchet not covered up misfeasance amongst his officers, he might not have brought so much scrutiny and attention to himself and could have been taken at his word when he said he did nothing wrong.