An SNP MSP has been accused of adding confusion to the postal vote chaos after incorrectly telling the public to hand in their ballots as they “may not arrive in time to be counted” for the general election on Thursday.
Jackie Dunbar suggested, in a now-deleted post on Twitter/X, that ballots returned by post on Tuesday or Wednesday may not reach counts in time for the election.
The Nationalist MSP encouraged voters instead to “hand-deliver” their ballot to a local polling station on the day.
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The Electoral Commission dismissed her claims and confirmed that all postal votes sent on either day would arrive before the deadline.
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Numerous voters north of the border have reported not having received their ballots.
The election falls in the first full week of the school summer holidays in most parts of Scotland, with delays in receiving postal votes resulting in some Scots being left without a vote due to already-planned holidays abroad.
Alex Cole-Hamilton, leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, criticised Dunbar’s tweet. “Across Scotland, and particularly in the Highlands, the results could be exceptionally close. This kind of statement adds further confusion to an already difficult situation,” he said.
An Electoral Commission spokeswoman said it was not aware of any outstanding large-scale issues, with the vast majority of postal ballots having been delivered.
“If there are individual cases where a voter has not yet received their postal ballot pack, they should request a replacement from their local authority. Voters can post their postal ballot until Wednesday, and we know the Royal Mail have plans in place to ensure all postal votes get delivered in time to be counted,” the spokeswoman said.
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New commission figures show that the number of postal votes issued for the election was the highest percentage on record in Scotland. A total of 998,863 voters, representing 24.5 per cent of an electorate of 4,081,505, have been registered to vote by post.
As of Tuesday morning, across the five Edinburgh constituencies the turnout of postal voters was 69 per cent, with 72,079 voters out of 103,581 postal ballots issued having cast their ballots.
A spokesman for Edinburgh council said it had seen ballots returned by DHL from as far as Norway, Hong Kong and the United States.
Edinburgh and Fife councils have already put in place emergency polling booths in order to reissue ballot papers to people who had not received their postal vote packs in time.
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The spokesman said: “With respect to Edinburgh as an initial summary, we reissued around 200 on Saturday — many to voters who were immediately heading to the airport or for ferries — and 100 on Sunday. Monday and today have been quieter with only around 50 yesterday.”
Fife council said as of yesterday it had reissued 297 postal vote packs across its four constituencies.
Royal Mail said it was delivering postal votes as soon as they arrived in its network. It has called for a review of how the printing and administration of postal votes is handled before the ballot papers are given to it.
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A spokesman said: “We have no backlog of postal votes and, whilst we are not complacent, we remain confident that postal votes handed to us on time will be delivered prior to polling day.
“We would welcome a review into the timetable for future elections with all stakeholders to ensure that the system for printing and administering postal votes before they are handed to Royal Mail works as smoothly as possible.”
