by The LLA asked all Unite members to vote on who to support in the Unite general secretary election. Despite some voting irregularities (see below), Howard Beckett came top in our poll. We are therefore asking LLA supporters to nominate him in their branches. The LLA will make a final voting recommendation when it is clear which candidates are on the ballot paper.
Report from LLA trade union caucus:
Final vote for the LLA Hustings via Survey Monkey
Due to an unusual voting pattern, the Organisers decided to produce only a preliminary report and to put their concerns before the next LLA Steering Committee for a final ruling.
Howard Beckett was the outright winner of the ballot with 256 votes.
Suspicions were aroused in the poll analysis, which revealed that 203 votes for the same candidate had been cast in 8 minutes, shortly before the poll closed, and furthermore an inspection of a large sample of the ISP numbers relating to these votes were reported on the website as Spam, and furthermore some some were reported to emanate from overseas digital media companies.
Samples of votes for the remaining two candidates were checked for comparison and there were no instances of reports of Spam.
In view of the fact that there was reasonable doubt about the source of so many votes in such a short period of time, together with the ISP reports, it was decided to announce the winner together with a rough estimate of those votes cast which did not attract suspicion.
The Steering Committee decided that the full result of the Monkey Survey ballot should be published. –
Votes cast – 516
Howard Beckett – 256 49.61%
Steve Turner – 242 – 46.9%
Sharon Graham – 18 – 3.49%
