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| Southampton Labour Has Robbed People of their Vote |
At Thursday's Shirley by-election, voters complained to Independent Network candidate Andrew Pope that they were prevented from voting.
The by-election was very close, being won by big political party Liberal Democrats by just 21 votes.
Andrew says:
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| Andrew Pope in Shirley Towers Photo: Southampton Independents |
"People told me they could not vote by post. And they could not vote in person either. It's a double whammy and an attack on democracy.
The lift in one block was broken for more than a week, with the Labour-run Council failing to fix it. I asked the housing office to fix it so that people could vote. But they did not fix it, so people could not vote. Why? How?
In Milner Court, there are two pensioner blocks with some people having mobility problems.
Without the lift, some people cannot get up or down the block, and so they could not get to the polling station. So that's Labour preventing voters from voting, just like I had to make them fix the sprinklers in Shirley Towers by shaming Labour into action.
And the Tories in Government put through the Elections Act 2022 which forced a lapse and timeout on postal votes. So some residents with mobility problems were unable to get their postal votes renewed in time, and then could not get to the polling station.
This was a close election. According to my team's sampling at the count, I did well in some areas and beat or was close to the Tories, Greens and Reform, but I lost votes in Milner Court because of Labour and the Tories failures. I am trying to bring a purer form of democracy back to Southampton.
Do Labour and the Tories care? No, it's their parties' failures and deliberate attacks on democracy that meant that voters could not vote.
Labour or Tory, same old story.
I will continue my work with the Independent Network and Southampton Independents to bring democracy back to Southampton."
