AN INDEPENDENT candidate in John Prescott’s Hull constituency is mounting the first legal challenge to Thursday’s election results after a postal ballot fiasco in his ward were he narrowly lost a seat.

Hours later a Liberal Democrat candidate said that he intended to contest his result in Birmingham amid widespread allegations of electoral fraud involving postal votes.

The two legal challenges are likely to be the first of many from candidates claiming that postal voting delays or electoral fraud hurt their chances.

The Liberal Democrats and the Tory party had said that legal challenges would be mounted after the chaos of printing errors and delays which marked the first mass compulsory postal ballot experiment. Although turnout was much higher in postal ballot regions — 44 per cent against 37 per cent for the rest of the country — the recriminations are likely to lead to radical changes in the scheme.

John Consindine, the Independent candidate in Hull, was beaten by seven votes by John Cornworth, a candidate for the UKIP, after five recounts. Mr Cornworth doubled the size of his vote from previous years to become the first UKIP councillor.

Mr Consindine claims that adminstrative failures in delivering and collecting the postal ballot results may have influenced the results in the Derringham ward in Kingston-upon-Hull.

Chris Jarvis, leader of the Independents in Hull, claimed that more than 200 postal ballot papers had been misdirected from Marfleet ward.

He also claimed that 140 ballot papers went missing between the time they were received by the council’s returning officer and when the results were declared early on Friday. Mr Jarvis said that some ballot papers had ended up in the counting rooms of other wards.

“Only three or four days before polling day, postal ballot papers were arriving in Derringham which were marked for Marfleet. When people rang up the council they were told they could come in to get a new form or could turn up at one of the “delivery and assistance” points on polling day. Nobody knows the actual number of papers delivered in error or how many were rectified,” said Mr Jarvis. “More worrying is that at 5pm yesterday the returning officer claimed that 3,540 papers had been returned. But when the results were announced they fell short by 140.”

Mr Consindine now has to file a petition to the Elections Petitions Office at the Royal Courts of Justice within 21 days. If the judge considers the election is invalid it could be rerun on a ward, council or regional basis. John Didrichsen, chief executive of Hull and returning officer, claimed that the count and declarations were carried out correctly. “Any complaints will be thoroughly investigated. If there is to be any legal challenge to the way the election was conducted I am confident we can present a strong case.”

Yesterday’s declaration in Birmingham was held up for hours because of allegations of fraud in one ward. A candidate in another ward said before the full results came in that he would mount a legal challenge over his own contest.

Ayoub Khan, who lost in Aston, said that political practices more usually seen in Bangladesh and Pakistan had been commonplace in this year’s city council election. He believes postal voting should not be available in areas with large Asian communities.

Mr Khan was a candidate standing in Aston, where a Labour councillor, Mohammed Kazi, was caught going through ballot papers in his car on an industrial estate at midnight. Mr Kazi, who was interviewed by police, was elected. “There has been abuse of the new postal system brought in to increase turnout. All it has done is increase the number of fraudlent votes. It is a kick in the teeth for democracy,” Mr Khan said.

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