THOUSANDS of people in the New Forest have been sent the wrong ballot papers.

About 15,000 residents in the district applied to vote by post in the forthcoming elections.

However, 2,000 of those in South Waterside and Totton North have been sent their ballot cards bearing the wrong names of candidates in the county council elections on May 5.

Everyone living in South Waterside was sent a card with the names of the candidates for Totton North and vice versa. The blunder was caused by election chiefs at New Forest Council who blamed a printing error.

The revelation comes after the Daily Echo revealed how the postal voting system could be abused, with one expert estimating up to one sixth of postal votes in Southampton alone could be open to fraud.

The problem was discovered only after a man suffering from leukaemia spotted the error and alerted the Daily Echo.

Allan Glass, 60, of Westcot Road, Holbury, applied for a postal vote because he has been out of hospital for only five weeks since being diagnosed with the disease last November.

Mr Glass, chairman of Fawley Parish Council, who is undergoing regular chemotherapy sessions, said: "I feel completely let down that a professional organisation can make such a blunder.

"This is going to cause an amazing amount of confusion. Some people who have voted will just ignore the new papers when they come through. This is negligence of the first order."

Council chiefs say they are now reprinting the cards, which will cost about £600, and will be sending the replacements out.

Head of communications, David Atwill, said: "We are grateful that an elector has brought a printing error on their postal voting paper to the attention of the acting returning officer, who has acted immediately to correct this mistake. The integrity of the postal vote will not be compromised in any way.

"The mistake has been immediately rectified and new postal voting papers will be sent out in time for the postal voting process to take place. Two thousand people have been affected by this error and the cost of this mistake will fall on the printers who made the error."

Acting returning officer Dave Yates said he took full responsibility for the mistake.

"Everybody that has been affected will get a new paper and nobody will lose their vote," he said.

Mr Yates said that any incorrect ballot papers that have already been returned will not be counted.

He added that his staff did not have time to check all the thousands of papers because they arrived a day late from the printers.

Alexis McEvoy, Tory candidate for South Waterside, said: "The government policy on encouraging so many to vote by post has put an unbearable pressure on the district council. I am not aware that this happened before."

A Hampshire County Council spokesman said: "This is an unfortunate situation but the deputy returning officer at New Forest Council has reassured me that everything possible is being done to retrieve the situation and that no one should be disenfranchised."

Professor James Connelly, professor of political thought at Southampton Institute, said that although he feared that the postal voting system itself was open to fraud, in instances such as had occurred in the New Forest, an advantage of the system was that it allowed mistakes to be corrected.

THE RIGHT CANDIDATES:

South Waterside

Wards: Fawley, Blackfield and Langley, Furzedown and Hardley, Holbury and North Blackfield.

Candidates: Lee Dunsdon (Lib Dem), Alexis McEvoy (Con).

Totton North

Wards: Totton Central, Totton North, Totton West.

Candidates: Frank Bright (Con), Peter Sopowski (Lab), Alan Weeks (Lib Dem).