Clacton by-election features UK's longest ever ballot paper, costing four times more to print
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The Clacton parliamentary by-election, prompted by Nigel Farage's resignation, features the UK's longest-ever 90cm ballot paper with 34 candidates, costing Tendring District Council four times more to print than standard ballots.
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The Clacton parliamentary by-election was triggered by the resignation of Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, who is now standing again. This by-election features a record 34 candidates, resulting in the longest ballot paper in British political history.
The longest ballot paper in British political history is costing four times as much to print than regular ballot papers, the local council has said.
The list for the Clacton parliamentary by-election, which was prompted by the resignation of Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, is 90cm (3ft) long.
When people unfold the paper, they will find it is longer than most adults' arms.
Tendring District Council chief executive Ian Davidson - who is the acting returning officer for the by-election in the Essex constituency - said organising the vote had been "manic".
People have already started returning postal votes to town hall and most registered voters will go to polling stations on 13 August.
Davidson said: "We've logistically been looking at the size of the ballot paper, how we fold it to get it into the envelope so we can send it out to our postal voters [and] how we manage the polling stations."
Davidson said his teams are having to make changes to the way they usually carry out elections.
The ballots are "going to be sometimes longer than the table so we're having to do double tables and we're going to have to sort them in batches before we can verify them or even count them."
Paul Whiteley, professor of government at the University of Essex, said the previous record for the number of candidates standing for a seat in the House of Commons was the Haltemprice and Howden by-election in East Yorkshire in July 2008.
"David Davis resigned his seat and stood again as a protest over the issue of civil liberties," explained Whiteley.
"There were 26 candidates."
Prior to that, the previous record was the Newbury by-election in Berkshire in 1993, which featured 19 candidates.
Farage resigned as MP for Clacton on 7 July, following increased scrutiny over his finances and a parliamentary investigation, but the Reform leader is standing again.
Among the candidates on the ballot are 20 independents - also a record for a single election.
A full list of the 34 candidates is available on the BBC News website. The main parties have chosen not to stand.
أسئلة مفتوحة
- How will the unusually long ballot paper affect voter experience?
- How will the logistical challenges impact the counting process?
