Friday March 23rd 2018
Joe Wallace and his supporters celebrate
The SNP candidate, Joe Wallace, has won the Ward 1 Penicuik by-election. The by-election was called after the death of Labour councillor and provost, Councilor Adam Montgomery.
Joe Wallace was elected at Stage 3. The election is by the Single Transferable Vote System (STV).
Mr Wallace was previously a Midlothian Councillor and the Provost up to May 2017, so this vistory sees him make a swift return to Midlothian Council. This now means that of the the 18 Midlothian Councillors, 7 are SNP, 6 are Labour and 5 are Conservative.
The effect of the result on the running of the council remains to be seen but Tuesday’s full council meeting will see the election of a Provost, whom will then chair council meetings. The Provost vote is a simply the one with highest number of votes, therefore if the votes go by party candidate then it will see an SNP Provost elected.
The turnout was 42.9%.
The four candidates were as follows:
The full results were:
Stage One
The total number of votes cast was 4,781 and 31 rejected.
No candidate attained the 2376 quota so the count proceeded to Stage 2. The candidate with the lowest number of votes, Helen Armstrong was excluded and her votes transferred to the remaining candidates in accordance with the voters’ next preferences.
Stage Two
Vivienne Wallace was then excluded and her votes transferred to the remaining candidates in accordance with the voters’ next preferences.
Stage Three
There were 661 non-transferrable votes identified at Stage 3 giving total non-transferable votes of 725.
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