The Conservative candidate for Brent & Harrow has announced his intention to file a petition against the result of the constitency assembly election.
Returning to Harrow Leisure centre more than an hour after the results were announced, Stefan Bucovineanul-Voloseniuc engaged in a lengthy conversation with the count’s returning officer.
This comes after Labour’s Krupesh Hirani was re-elected to the Assembly with 63,867 votes, compared to Bucovineanul-Voloseniuc’s 55,039.
Although Brent & Harrow voted for Conservative candidate Susan Hall to be mayor over Labour’s Sadiq Khan, polling 66,151 votes compared to 58,743.
He said: “Because of the number of votes declared, I don’t think it’s fair – I got 55,000 for the Greater London Assembly. For the mayoral vote Labour got 58,000 votes and the Conservatives 66,000.
“I don’t trust Brent to run an election, and to be honest I requested before the result was declared to check the Reform UK ballot papers and they refused.
“I don’t believe it’s a fair election in Brent & Harrow.”
But a Brent Council spokesperson said Bucovineanul-Voloseniuc would have to produce evidence of irregularities in the election to be able to file a petition.
He also said the candidate had requested a thumb-recount (a flicking through a bundle of ballot papers to check consistency) of the Reform UK ballot papers for the London-wide count.
But as he was not a London-wide candidate, the request was denied, and a further opportunity to raise concerns ahead of the results was not taken.
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