Some Conservative Party members get multiple postal ballots: Report

Some members of the UK's ruling Conservative Party may have been issued more than one postal ballot paper to cast their vote to elect a new party leader to replace Theresa May as British Prime Minister, according to a media report on Saturday. Ballot papers have been dispatched to around 166,000 Conservative Party members around the UK to choose between Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson as the new Tory leader, who will take charge at 10 Downing Street.

The process of dispatch is to be completed by Monday and the vote closes at 5 pm on July 22. The results will be announced the following day. According to the BBC, some members have already received two ballot papers.

In some cases, because members live and work in different constituencies and may have joined local Conservative Associations in both areas. People who have changed their name, after marriage, for example, may also have been affected. "The ballot holds clear instructions that members voting more than once will be expelled," the Conservative Party said in a statement.

"No different to how many people get more than one ballot paper in a General Election, but (as ballot paper makes clear) they can only vote once," Conservative Party chairman Brandon Lewis tweeted. The Electoral Commission, the independent body which oversees UK elections to ensure their integrity, has no role in the leadership contest, which is only governed by the Conservative Party's internal rules.

"It's right there on the ballot paper saying you must only vote on one occasion and I expect people to do that," said Sir Patrick McLoughlin, a former UK Cabinet minister who is chairing Hunt's leadership campaign. Johnson's campaign chairman and another former Cabinet minister, Iain Duncan Smith, said he believed the Conservative Party chairman had "already been asked to look carefully at how they sift" ballots.

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