Bolton Council Elections 2019
What an fantasticly exciting night. At around 9:40pm I and two of my guests got an Uber to the town hall in Bolton. Outside the town hall were a large number of Candidates, Agents, Counting Agents, Guests, Press and more. I met with other members from my party and we joined the queue into the town hall. Just in time too, as it started to rain. Rosettes were divvied out to our party members and we were all looking all official now 😁
As we queued I chatted with Hilary Fairclough (Conservative Councillor, incoming Mayor of Bolton and personal friend). We had a great catch-up and chat about things. Hilary is absolutely lovely.
Everyone went through security and bags were checked for those who had them. It was very busy and the hussel and bussel made it, to me, look quite disorganised. In hindsight, it wasn't at all, it was the only way it could work with the amount of people there. After checking names off the guest lists it was upstairs into the town hall proper to mingle with everyone there.
There are 20 wards in Bolton each with a number of candidates standing from various parties, each with possibly an Agent, two Counting Agents and up to four guests. So, as you can imagine that's a lot of people. I think there were three rooms where the sorting and counting of ballot papers took place. Don't ask me the names of the rooms - it's all a blur 😊 (I have only been inside the town hall, two maybe three times in my life) The huge room we went to was laid out with tables in a square enabling everyone to walk around the outside of them. I don't have a photograph of this room as photography of any sort was forbidden in there.So, there were 8 people sorting and counting ballot papers in my ward. Ballot boxes from the various polling stations arrived and counting began. I was in awe at how this was set up. They first started to open and bundle the ballot papers into piles. Then trays with each candidates name were placed in front of each set of counters. There were four trays with my name on it. Hours of sorting and counting ensued. Counting Agents could watch the sorting up close and question or point out any mistakes as ballot papers could end up in the wrong trays This same process happened for each and every ward in Bolton. As you may be able to guess, this was a mammoth undertaking.
During the night I chatted to other candidates; mingled with a lot of people; and wandered around the various counts happening around the room. I watched a bit of the sorting and counting at my tables. I introduced myself to people - some friendly some not. It was a strange affair. There were a number people who said hello to me whom I knew by face but couldn't for the life of me remember their names - I'm shocking with names 😂 I didn't have any nastiness towards myself personally but other people from my party experienced a bit grief. This is caused by the mainstream media and the lies and misinformation they spread about UKIP in general. People do actually believe it causes division and anger - and does cost votes in the end.
Anyway, as the night progressed, results were announced to the candidates privately and then each ward was given centre stage where the results were officially announced.
The full results for Astley Bridge were:
1732 votes for Paul Wild - Conservatives1417 votes for Warren Fox - Liberal Democrats597 votes for Steve Sutton - Labour
369 votes for Mohammed Akhtar - Independent283 votes for Paul Gannon - UKIP
This is what Bolton News reported from the night:
Bolton Council Elections 2019: Labour suffer big defeat
Thank you to my party for their support during these elections. Well done to all of the candidates. Thank you to Steve and Katie who came with me to support me on the evening.
