143.The organisation of an industrial action ballot is often a complicated task and can sometimes involve many thousands of people spread around the country and, occasionally, abroad. However, a whole ballot can be invalidated if a union commits small errors in determining who is eligible to vote or if a union fails to a small extent to send ballot papers to all those entitled to vote and to nobody else. In order to provide greater scope for such errors to be disregarded, provided they are accidental and on a scale which is unlikely to affect the outcome of a ballot, paragraph 9 introduces a new section 232B into the 1992 Act defining where failures to meet the requirements of section 227(1) (entitlement to vote in a ballot) and parts of section 230 (conduct of a ballot) can be disregarded.
Commentary on Sections Trade unions Disregard of certain minor and accidental failures