People in Cornwall who sent votes in the mail to help their local charity win a pot of National Lottery cash have had them returned following a postal blunder. Anyone who has had them back is asked to urgently repost them to ensure their vote is counted.
Many people filled in a postcard designed by the lottery to cast votes for Cornwall Accessible Activities Program (CAAP) for its Time2Shine project to help disabled youngsters.
They are in the running, alongside four other projects in the South West for National Lottery funding in the People's Project competition, which will be decided by a public vote.
The other projects are Battling on CIC in Callington, which works with people with behavioural and mental health issues become more resilient, led by ex-military instructors and volunteers who have themselves overcome trauma, best foot forward dance for fall prevention in Devon, changing lives through food in Axminster and equine healing, horse-assisted learning for disabled children in Exeter.
The postcard for postal votes as designed by the National Lottery
CAAP volunteers spent the weekend at Pool Market manning a stall, as well as at other events, collecting more than 1,000 postcards from people to send in by Monday's deadline for posting.
However people started complaining that their postcards had arrived back at their homes.
Postal blunder means Lottery People's Project votes are returned to voters' homes
People in Cornwall who sent votes in the mail to help their local charity win a pot of National Lottery cash have had them returned following a postal blunder. Anyone who has had them back is asked to urgently repost them to ensure their vote is counted.
Many people filled in a postcard designed by the lottery to cast votes for Cornwall Accessible Activities Program (CAAP) for its Time2Shine project to help disabled youngsters.
They are in the running, alongside four other projects in the South West for National Lottery funding in the People's Project competition, which will be decided by a public vote.
The other projects are Battling on CIC in Callington, which works with people with behavioural and mental health issues become more resilient, led by ex-military instructors and volunteers who have themselves overcome trauma, best foot forward dance for fall prevention in Devon, changing lives through food in Axminster and equine healing, horse-assisted learning for disabled children in Exeter.
The postcard for postal votes as designed by the National Lottery
CAAP volunteers spent the weekend at Pool Market manning a stall, as well as at other events, collecting more than 1,000 postcards from people to send in by Monday's deadline for posting.
However people started complaining that their postcards had arrived back at their homes.
The team from CAAP who are hoping to win nearly £47,000 for their project
Sandy Lawrence, chairman of CAAP, said: "It was really hard work repeating over and over what the project was and how to vote. The young people got involved and it was lovely to see them doing it for themselves.
"The advice we were initially given was that the vote counters (who are an independent organisation from the lottery) did not want them bundled in one envelope, but that they had to be posted separately.
"We were given a template of how the voting card should look which we followed to the letter. We were made aware that there was a problem yesterday when a member of CAAP posted a picture on facebook of the card being sent to the voter rather than to the lottery and gradually more people said they or someone they knew had had their card returned to them."
After contacting the lottery she was told they had been made aware of the issue from another region and advised that everyone receiving their postcard back should put it immediately back in the post, this time inside an envelope with the freepost address on it.
The post on the National Lottery website
"The lottery confirmed that the issue was between the count organisation and Royal Mail as the freepost address had not successfully reached all sorting offices.
"We are gutted as this 1,000 votes could mean the difference between winning or losing."
Anyone who has not yet voted can do so online until April 3. You can vote here. https://www.thepeoplesprojects.org.uk/p ... ung-people" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;