15799/2MORE people in the Devizes constituency have registered for a postal vote than ever before, throwing down a strategic challenge to the staff whose job it is to manage the upcoming General and county council elections.

Even before the General Election was called on Tuesday morning, more than 9,700 voters had registered to vote by mail on May 5 and Kennet District Council, which is overseeing the poll, confidently expects that more than 10,000 voters out of 85,000 in the constituency will have registered for the postal ballot by the closing date of April 26.

Each postal vote will need to be opened and verified by council staff before the votes are included in the count on the night of May 5, when the parliamentary vote will be decided, and the morning of May 6, when the county council votes will be counted.

Mark Boden, chief executive of Kennet District Council and returning officer for both elections, said: "It is an enormous logistical challenge, but one we are sure we are up to.

"The difficulty comes when applications for postal votes are sent to agencies other than ourselves. For example, at the last European elections, the Conservative Party urged its supporters to apply for postal votes but unfortunately the applications were sent to their party HQ in pre-paid envelopes intended for donations.

"We then received about 1,000 applications for postal votes the day before the deadline elapsed. But we coped."

The uncertainty over whether the General Election would be declared for the same date as the county council elections has not helped Kennet's finely balanced mechanisms for organising the vote.

Jonathan Gale, the council's head of democratic services, said: "It has caused real practical difficulties. If it had just been a county council election, we could have had the voting cards printed two weeks ago, but we had to wait to see if the General Election was called as well before we had them printed.

"There are 350 local authorities throughout the country wanting their election literature printed very quickly and only a small number of specialist printers able to do the work."

The postal votes cannot be sent out before April 20, because the deadline for applications only lapses at 5pm the previous day. This leaves a short time for voters to fill in their ballot papers, have them witnessed and return them to Kennet in time.

The huge rise in the number of applications for the postal vote resulted from a change in the law that came into force in time for the last General Election in 2001.

Before that, those applying for the postal vote had to show evidence of health or employment reasons for not being able to turn up to vote in person.

Recent publicity surrounding fraud in postal ballots in Birmingham and elsewhere in the country has highlighted the lack of security surrounding the system.

But Mr Boden is content that similar fraud is not likely to operate in Kennet. He said: "By its very nature, postal voting is not as secure as voting at polling stations. The returning officer has no power of enforcement. If he suspects that fraud is taking place, the police would have to be brought in."

As more people turn to postal votes, fewer are likely to turn up at rural polling stations and this year Kennet is providing six fewer than at previous elections, 63 instead of 69.

Despite an outcry when the loss of the six was announced, Kennet has only received two letters of complaint from members of the public.

For example, residents of Manton will have to travel 200 yards or so up London Road to Marlborough Leisure Centre to make their crosses on ballot papers, while for the first time voters in Roundway parish will go to the new Cadet Centre at Le Marchant Barracks.