Guido just got off the phone with Electoral Services in Bristol East a couple of hours ago, after being disturbed and puzzled to see a tweet about the contents of postal votes published a short time ago by Kerry McCarthy, Labour’s Twitter Tsar and candidate in Bristol East.

As it was re-tweeted about the twittersphere with queries as to whether this was legal, Kerry quickly deleted the tweet – before it could be stored in the Google cache, but not before Tweetminster picked it up.

The rules are that postal votes are opened in the presence of every candidate’s agent. They are opened face down, but agents can get a peek in. Because announcing these results prematurely can affect the outcome of the whole election, however, they’re under strict confidentiality rules. Bristol Electoral Services are now looking into it as a matter of urgency…