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A dizzying range of joke candidates left voters so baffled a record number of ballots were rejected in this month s London mayoral election.
Around 114,000 ballots were spoilt after the first round of voting because the 20 candidates packed onto a sheet of A4 paper confused voters into either accidentally ticking the first-choice column twice or choosing too many contenders.
Labour candidate Sadiq Khan went on to secure victory in the May 6 election and has been awarded a second term as Mayor of London with 1,013,721 first-choice votes.
But with the four rows of candidates featuring mainly jokesters, public opinion may have become disenfranchised , according to one politics expert.
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The list reads like it could be the line-up from Strictly Come Dancing: an interplanetary space warrior, a YouTuber prankster and a former crime drama star forging a new political career path. But in fact, these are the candidates taking on Sadiq Khan in next month’s London mayoral election.
They are a varied lot - and there is a record-breaking number of them. While 12 nominees ran in 2016, a total of 20 have put their names in the hat for this year’s City Hall contest, which currently sees Khan in the lead, followed by Tory hopeful Shaun Bailey, a former youth worker who has has served in the London Assembly since 2016. Other candidates include UKIP’s Peter Gammons, Mandu Reid for the Women’s Equality Party and the Greens’ Sian Berry.