My wife and I both voted in the referendum by post. We no longer live in Ealing, but as British citizens living overseas for less than 15 years, we did have a vote in the referendum. Prior to our move overseas, we lived in Ealing Central ward, so I assume that is where our votes should be counted. But there were zero postal votes recorded for that ward (http://www.ealingtoday.co.uk/default.asp?section=info&page=eabrexitresults001.htm ). Odd.In fact there are several mathematical oddities in the published table.The official declaration of votes counted (on ealing.gov.uk) was Turnout: 149,268 Remain: 90024 Leave: 59017 Rejected: 227If you add up the votes for the individual wards, the numbers were Turnout: 149,268 Remain: 89930 Leave: 58921 Rejected: 417The difference between the two sets of figures is not vast - but it does nevertheless raise a question of how accurate the count actually was.More concerning is the question of postal votes. Exactly half of the 24 Ealing wards recorded postal votes, whilst an identical number of wards reported none. In the wards that did record postal votes, approximately 25% (from 16% to 36%) of the total votes were postal. It seems to me extremely unlikely that exactly half of the wards in Ealing enthusiastically adopt postal voting and the other half cast exactly zero postal votes.Maybe the Returning Officer for Ealing decided to combine wards' postal votes to simplify counting, since the only results which mattered were the totals for Ealing. I do hope that such a cavalier attitude would not be repeated in elections where ward level results really matters (Council Elections, for example).
Robin Hall ● 3406d