what on earth does that mean? the result wasn't even close!

ed: The election of the mayor wasn't the only election taking place that night. If you read the report, you will see where our particular concerns lie. Although it's also fair to say that it is entirely unknown how correctly the machines read and allocated the ballots - there is no transparency into that part of the process. There is significant circumstantial evidence (not covered in great depth in the report) that that could have allocated some blank ballot papers in the London Assembly elections to a random candidate due to oversensitivity. This is less likely to have happened in the mayoral election because there are two columns to mark, but no-one can know for sure how common it was.

Gerv

looks like technophobia to me.
noone who took part in the election queried any of the figures