The island votes will be sent off to St Mary’s airport once the polls close. They will then be taken by BIH helicopter tomorrow morning to Penzance, where the general election votes will be officially counted. The lateness of the counting is due to Penzance counting their local election results in priority to the general election. Due to an unforeseen cricumstance, the local election papers have been placed in the same box as the general election papers. The Islanders do not have authority to open the sealed ballot boxes to get the local election papers out. This means that once Penzance has counted the general election ballot papers from the Island, it will send the remaining local election papers back to the Islands so the locals can count the local election papers. Since the local election papers will not be counted and returned until tomorrow lunch-time, we will not know our new Council until mid-Friday afternoon. The St Ives constituency result should come out about 12-1 pm on Friday.
