It could be that the poor response was due to the number of cabin crew who were
a) on leave
b) live overseas and did not recieve their ballot papers in sufficient time to be able to return them in the time available
c) did not return their votes in sufficient time to make the deadline.
or the fact that they were incapable of putting an x in a box
I'm not sure who was charged with sending out the ballot papers, the union or the body charged with counting the results. One thing that is certain is that Unite sent out more ballot papers than they have members.