Sir – How sad that our elections have become such a shambles.

My fellow councillor, Mary-Jane Sareva, lost her seat by only a few votes. Since then I have heard from many people that they would have voted for her if they had received their postal vote forms in time.

I gather that the forms had not arrived in our area by May 4. They had arrived in other areas over a week earlier.

Many residents have since said how much they appreciated Mary Jane and the way in which we worked as a team together and that they had voted for her.

Unfortunately, the students who live in St. Clements are only living here for a year and are not aware of local issues, such as the Manzil Way park, Angel and Greyhound meadows, housing and traffic problems and other ways we aim to support our community.

The fact that we read in the student newspaper that students were allowed, even encouraged, to vote two or three times in the election explains why there were so many students votes that probably skewed the result.

Students were voting on the national issues and the brilliant and charismatic leader of the Green party, Caroline Lucas, was excluded from the national debates.

Nuala Young, Oxford