We don’t like our elections to be straightforward in Crawley any more than we like them to be boring.

Last year we had the great postal vote fiasco where ballot papers were sent to voters in the wrong wards. There was some hasty re-printing of ballot papers for the affected wards on a different colour paper but some of those reprints would have got to holidaying voters after they left for holiday while some other voters will have either got confused or annoyed enough to not bother using them. On top of that it reduced confidence in postal voting even in wards which were not affected.

Nobody knows whether this had any impact on the results. We lost, and lost narrowly in a couple of areas, and who knows whether we would have either clung on without the mix-up or would have lost more convincingly – or whether there would have been no material difference. Frustratingly for us, the affected wards all seemed to be Labour marginal wards which the Tories were targeting and subsequently won.

There were mutterings about challenging results if they turned out to be close, but in the end nobody bothered. The only real fall-out from it was that the council sacked the printers and turned to another company for election material this year.

This year’s printers have found a new way to cause chaos.

Last week our agents were told (or those who turned up at the meeting anyway) that the printing of the polling cards had been delayed so they got sent out a couple of weeks late. Many people are not really aware of exactly when the elections are, despite several political parties bombarding them with leaflets for weeks, until they get that polling card. At which point they realise it clashes with a holiday or something, and ask for a postal vote.

Normally this is not a problem as the polling cards are delivered at least a week before the cut-off date for requesting a postal vote, but this year everyone was told they were too late. Apparently the council received 60 calls on the day the first polling cards were received. Someone on a local paper told me that they had been bombarded with calls too.

Callers to the Town Hall were being advised to get a proxy vote and if they didn’t trust anyone enough, to give their proxy vote to their preferred candidate. Quite amusing really as we take a cautious approach and are advised to not even be in the same room as a postal vote in case we can be accused of interfering with it but its Ok to go in the polling station and actually vote on someone else’s behalf.

The worst of it is that it all looks like a series of totally unconnected cock-ups by third parties so if we lose another seat by a single vote we can’t even blame anyone or feel victimised except by fate. But maybe we will win a seat by a vote or two, or pick the long straw if we get yet another dead heat. It must be our turn for a bit of luck. (the eternal cry of the West Ham supporter)

I wonder what next year’s printers will manage to come up with?