One voter complained that his postal vote would not be counted because the local government had difficulty sending it to China.
Lecturer Dr Daniel Hutton Ferris said Newcastle City Council told him its software could not recognise the Mandarin characters in the address of his accommodation in China.
The council said they had spoken to Dr. Hutton Ferris and agreed to send the ballot to the address written in the Roman alphabet.
But Dr. Hutton Ferris said he still hadn’t received the ballot. “If it comes now, I won’t have time to send it back in time,” he said.
Dr Hutton Ferris, a lecturer in political theory at Newcastle University, applied for a postal vote shortly after the May general election because he was due to be on holiday in China on 4 July.
But after a week of no response and a follow-up email, the local government replied that their software could not recognize the Mandarin characters in his postal address.
The teacher explained that he could write the address in Pinyn, a form of Mandarin Chinese written in the Roman alphabet, but that the chances of the ballot being delivered to him were less likely.
The Chinese “postal system is better equipped to read their own language,” he said.
According to Dr. Hutton Ferris, many countries do not write with the Roman alphabet and the council should have better systems in place to send postal votes to these places.
The academic returned his Pinyn address to the council on June 11, but has still not received a ballot paper.
He said the whole process had left him “disenfranchised” and that “action needs to be taken at this point”.
“As a philosopher of democracy, I am shocked in my daily work,” he said.
The council said the ballot paper had been sent to Dr Hutton Ferris last week and was “now in the hands of the postal services”.