Hackney council candidate accused of changing his name to top polling card
Kofo David - Credit: Archant
Rival councillors have accused a Labour candidate of duplicity after he changed his name – resulting in him being listed at the top of a polling card.
Kofoworola Adeolu David stood as one of three Labour candidates in Cazenove ward in the 2010 election, garnering the second highest number of votes for the party and the fifth highest among all the candidates.
During the election, his surname was listed as David while his other forenames names were listed as Kofoworola Adeolu.
But in the forthcoming elections on May 22, the candidate has now listed his surname as Adeolu-David and his first name as Kofo, making him the candidate listed at the top of the polling card.
In the 2010 elections, Liberal Democrat Cllr Dawood Akhoon, who was alphabetically top of the list, won the highest number of votes in the ward.
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Lib Dem leader and Cazenove councillor Ian Sharer said: “If you look at the results four years ago, you will see it’s him. He’s changed his name to get to the top of the list. What other reason can it be? It’s a bit cheeky.”
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Meanwhile fellow Cazenove councillor Abraham Jacobson said: “People look to get their name first on the list. He’s trying to outflank the other Labour candidates.
“When you get two or three people representing a party, voters pick the one higher on the list. Or when voters are choosing people from more than one party, they pick the first candidate from that party on the list. Others just vote for the first three candidates.
“If you check the election results for the last 12 years, you can see this effect.“
Mr Adeolu-David, who is known as @kofo_david on Twitter, said: “Why would I change my name to get more voters? Where’s the research that names get votes? “If you back into Cazenove history as far as 1998, that notion is incorrect.
“A person’s placement on the polling card does not have anything to do with the number of votes. The last election is the only time where the candidate who was listed first got the most votes.”
But he refused to explain why his name had changed, saying: “I’m not prepared to go into my family history. I don’t understand what rules they think have been broken. If they don’t understand why people vote, they should knock on doors as everyone else has been.”
The Labour Party were unavailable for comment.
