How Lincolnshire Police and Crime Commissioner 2024 spoiled ballot papers compare to previous years

Marc Jones was re-elected as Lincolnshire's Police and Crime Commissioner for a third consecutive term at the local elections in May. A total of 109,295 people visited their local polling stations across Lincolnshire to vote for the next crime commissioner, but a small percentage of these were spoiled meaning they were invalid.

Conservative Marc Jones received 39,639 of the votes, followed by Labour's Mike Horder with 31,931, Reform UK's Peter Escreet with 15,518, Liberal Democrats' Lesley Rollings with 13,380 and English Democrats' David Dickason with 7,739 - as well as a total of 1,088 spoiled ballots. A ballot paper can be rejected for a number of reasons, including voting for more candidates than required to or even failing to mark the ballot at all.

In the 2024 elections, the 1,088 spoiled ballots made up just 0.99 percent of the votes. A total of 666 of these were unmarked or void for uncertainty while 307 included votes for more candidates than required to and 115 included a writing or mark by which a voter could be identified, except from the printed number and other unique identifying mark on the back.

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The previous PCC elections in 2021 saw a total of 177,528 votes, 5,757 (3.24 percent) of which were spoiled. A total of 2,610 were unmarked, 1,651 voted for more candidates than required to, 1,359 were unmarked or wholly void for uncertainty, 134 included a writing or mark by which voter could be identified and three were rejected due to want of an official mark.

In the 2016 PCC elections, there were two counts for first and second preference. Altogether, there were 140,857 votes with 11,432 (8.11 percent) spoiled. The spoiled ballot reasons for the 2016 elections can be seen below:

First preference count

• Want of an official mark 1

• Voting for more Candidates as to the 1st preference vote 1,161

• Writing or mark by which voter could be identified 177

• Unmarked as to the first preference vote 325

• Being unmarked or wholly void for uncertainty as to the 1st preference vote 1,106

Total 2,770

Second preference count

• Want of an official mark 0

• Voting for more Candidates as to the 2nd preference vote 22

• Writing or mark by which voter could be identified 1

• Unmarked as to the 2nd preference vote 8,006

• Being unmarked or wholly void for uncertainty as to the 2nd preference vote 633

Total 8,662

The 2024 PCC elections saw the lowest amount of spoiled ballot papers in the last eight years at 0.99 percent. This follows a downward trend since the 2016 elections which saw 8.11 percent of votes spoiled and the 2021 elections which saw 3.24 percent spoiled.

Notably, the number of total votes in the 2024 PCC elections also decreased by 68,233 from 2021. Marc Jones will now act as Lincolnshire's PCC for another four years before the next set of elections.