from Bill Still
lass=”” >Good afternoon, I’m still reporting on Brexit.
Late testing on special high-speed ballot counting computers have revealed that a number of them only counted Remain votes on the eve of the Brexit count.
Approximately 1,000 of the ballot counters have been deployed around the UK to try to speed the counting process after a rather late closing of the polls at 10 pm, London time – 5 pm Eastern time.
According to the Southend News Network, over 800 of the machines will not recognize the cross symbol that many Britons still mark their ballots with, instead of the “X” symbol, the “checkmark” symbol, or blackening in the box.
Ballots marked with the cross symbol will be ignored.
Southend on the Sea is a coastal area about 30 miles directly east of London
Last night, Claude-Jean Wünker, the head engineer of Zahlen, the German manufacturer of the counting machines said:
“It has come to our attention this evening that a significant number of our ballot counting machines have developed a fault which makes them only capable of counting crosses in the ‘remain’ box.
“Our software programmers will be working throughout the night to try and fix the problem, but all 1000 machines will definitely be in service when the voting stations close at 10pm.”
A member of Zahlen’s Southend on Sea testing center without the authority to make a public comment said that as a test exercise, 10,000 schoolchildren were enlisted into a mock vote.
They were told to make their selections as they would if they were adults but put a cross inside in the checkbox instead of any other mark:
“… our team of volunteers manually counted them all. 57% voted to leave the EU, 41% voted to remain, and the remaining 2% were spoiled.”
“However, once the entire test batch had been put through one of the £35,000 counting machines, the results were given as 41% to remain and 59% spoiled – it recognised every ‘leave’ vote as a spoiled paper and in my opinion it is way too late to fix it now.”
I’m Still reporting from Washington. Good day.