POSTAL voters have accidentally spoiled their ballots after a date of birth section was mislabelled, a local authority has said.
Dumfries and Galloway Council told how a misprint removed an instruction in a section which voters were supposed to fill in with their date of birth.
However, some forms were missing the key phrase “My date of birth is ...” above a row of three dated boxes.
This meant that some locals had put the day’s date in the box instead, inadvertently spoiling their ballot.
The returning officer for the region confirmed the mistake in a statement and said the postal vote packs would be recalled and replacements reissued.
The authority wrote on Facebook: “We’ve started to receive your postal votes back in.
“A few returns have put ‘today’s date’ in the boxes below.
“Just to clarify, it needs to be the voter’s date of birth that goes in these boxes, eg 01 01 1990.”
One concerned voter on social media said: “Not everyone in Scotland is getting the SAME BALLOT PAPER!
“Some have omitted ‘Please enter date of birth’ above the spaces, and people are putting today’s date and spoiling their votes.”
Returning officer for the region Fiona Lees (below) said: “I have been made aware that a very small number of postal vote packs issued for the Scottish Parliament 2021 election did not include the text ‘My date of birth is’ on the postal vote statement.
“I have taken prompt action to rectify this matter and retrieve these packs, so that the matter can be addressed by Idox, our print contractor.
“Replacements packs will be issued.
“I have consulted with the elections management board and the electoral commission for Scotland, and they are satisfied with the action I am taking.”
It comes after a record number of Scots applied for postal votes ahead of the election due to the pandemic.
Provisional figures from Scotland’s electoral registration officers show 1,010,638 people are now registered to vote by post in the Holyrood election.
The figure equates to nearly one quarter (23.8%) of the electorate and is the greatest number of people ever registered for a postal vote in Scotland.
The electoral commission was approached for comment.
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