The Independent Election Management Group appointed to oversee the voting process in the recent Fans' Ballot have contacted the Society to inform us they have an issue with the votes.
Stuart Galloway of the EMG said "The Poll is being conducted by the Election Management Group (EMG) and none of the members of the group were permitted to vote. The Poll closed on 31st August. The PO box and the boxes at Dens were emptied on Friday 2nd September by the PO box keyholder - Robin Grimmond. The contents were delivered to the EMG who checked the papers for elegibility and then counted them. A report was then prepared and submitted to the Society's Board on Thursday 8th September.
"On Friday 9th September the keyholder routinely checked the PO box for ordinary Society mail and discovered just under 200 envelopes addressed to the EMG. He passed these to the EMG who checked postmarks and found that all but two of the envelopes had entered the Royal Mail system betwen 15th and 27th August. Over half had been posted first class. In the normal course of events the EMG would have expected that all but two should have been delivered before 31st August.
"In the interest of fairness and as the supporters were quite clearly not at fault the EMG decided to accept the late papers. These have been checked and counted and a further report will be submitted to the Society's Board by Monday evening."
More information can be found in tonight's Evening Telegraph - as per the rules of the Ballot (which can be found here), the Ballot process has and will continue to be managed by the EMG and the Society are not involved until such time as an updated result is communicated to us. We will have the updated result online on Tuesday.