Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing to make a request under the Freedom of Information
Act.

I am interested in postal voting for the recent local elections on
1 May. For each ward contested in this election, can you please
provide me with the statistics contained within the Form K
'statement as to postal ballot papers' completed by your returning
officer as required by Schedule 3 to the Representation of the
People (England and Wales) Regulations 2001. This data should be
provided in a spreadsheet format rather than Word or PDF.

Finally, I would also be very grateful if you could outline for me
the processes used by the council to check that personal
identifiers (signatures and dates of birth) for completed ballots
match those given when an application for a postal vote was made.
This description should include, but not necessarily be limited to,
descriptions of all human and electronic verification methods and
the circumstances in which particular methodologies are used.

Kind regards,

Dear Mr Smithee

Freedom of Information Act 2000 - Request for Information

Thank you for your recent enquiry for information held by the Council under
the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. I acknowledge
receipt of your request dated 26th May 2008 which was received in our
office on 27th May 2008 and I will be touch with you again in due course.

In some circumstances a fee may be payable and if that is the case, we will
let you know. A fees notice will be issued to you and you will be required
to pay before we will proceed to deal with your request.

If you require any further information or are not happy with our response
please do not hesitate to contact a member of our team on 0121 303 4876.

Yours sincerely

Corporate Information Governance Team

Data Protection Act 1998
The information you have provided within your Freedom of Information
request will be held on our database and may also be held within manual
records for a period of 2 years from the date Birmingham City Council
received your request. Any personal data that you provide to Birmingham
City Council will be held in line with the requirements set out within the
Data Protection Act 1998.
Re Use of Public Sector Information
Where Birmingham City Council is the copyright holder of any information
that may be released, re-use for personal, educational or non-commercial
purposes is permitted without further reference to the City Council. Where
the re-use is for other purposes, such as commercial re-use, the applicant
should notify the City Council in writing to seek approval or agree terms
for re-use.

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Dear Mr Smithee

Your query under the Freedom of Information Act has been passed to me and I
set out here the information you require.

At Birmingham Elections Office we use the Opt2Vote Postal Vote Management
System to process and compare postal votes. All original postal vote
applications are scanned by staff in the Elections Office. The stored data
and images are exported to Opt2Vote at the time of an election.

City Council staff are employed to open returned postal votes. There are a
number of opening sessions that can be observed by candidates/agents.

All Postal Vote Statements are scanned and Opt2Vote software compares the
signature and Date of Birth on the statement against that of the original
application.

Any statements not matching are reported on, and then trained supervisors
adjudicate to allow through any that are considered acceptable. All those
that are to be rejected are done so by the supervisors, at pre-arranged
sessions that candidates/agents are invited to observe.

Ballot Papers are then scanned and all 'good' Ballot Papers are sealed into
Ballot Boxes ready to be transported to the Count.

On election day, data is exported to 18 remote scanners and laptops, and we
continue the process for any postal votes lately received, or handed in at
Polling Stations at each of the 18 Count Centres.

After the process at Count Centres is completed, the information is brought
back to the Central Location, and exported back on to the main server.

I attached copies of the form Ks for all wards:

(See attached file: Form K 2008 40Wards.doc)

Typed and sent on behalf of Cheryl Mulvihill, Electoral Services Manager

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