Nearly 200 Votes Rejected In Wrexham Council Elections

A hundred and eighty three ballot papers were rejected during this month’s local elections a Wrexham.com FOI has revealed.

Voting papers can be rejected for a number of reasons including having too many boxes crossed, none at all or due to identity issues.

The main cause of rejected votes in Wrexham was putting crosses in more than one box with 43 papers rejected for this reason.

In some instances this can be done by mistake, however during our election coverage we spoke to several people who said they intended to spoil their ballot paper by crossing too many boxes as a form of protest.

Reasons varied from dissatisfaction with the choice of candidates on offer to general apathy at the election process.

In Wrexham’s more marginal seats rejected ballot papers could have made all the difference e.g. in Queensway which was won by two votes by Labour’s Colin Powell, there were two ballot papers rejected.

Also in Gresford East & West, where Labour’s Andrew Bailey won by three votes, there were a total of five votes rejected.

The data also revealed that a total of 36,780 votes were cast in Wrexham accounting for an overall turn out of 34.16%.

One of the highest turn outs was in Stansty where David Bithell was triumphant where 54.17% of people eligible to vote came out.

This was in contrast to Plas Madoc with 19.88%.