Blame for postal vote delays lies with Downing Street
The postal vote delays are a predictable result of the Prime Minister’s decision to hold an election in the most inconvenient week of the year for people in Scotland, say the Scottish Greens.
With the huge increase in demand for postal votes, the party’s co-chair, Ross Greer MSP, pointed out that disenfranchised voters could be a deciding factor in some seats.
Mr Greer said: "There are obviously important administrative lessons to be learned here. But the problems come back in large part to Rishi Sunak's selfish timing of the election.
“The Prime Minister could have called it at any point between now and January, but he chose the most inconvenient week of the year for people in Scotland to vote.
"Our school holidays start at the end of June, so this decision predictably resulted in a surge of postal vote applications. In Edinburgh alone there was a more than 40% increase from the last election. Sunak and his team either didn't care to check or they knew and proceeded anyway.
"And now people who have already left on their holiday expecting to vote by post have no options available - their democratic right has been taken away.
“And in 2017 four seats in Scotland were won by less than 100 votes. So not only is this a democratic outrage for the impacted voters, it could very well be the deciding factor in some contests.”
