Aloud, criticise a vote counter smoking this? (9)
I believe the answer is:
panatella
'smoking this?' is the definition.
(panatella is a type of cigar)
'aloud criticise a vote counter' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'criticise' could be 'pan' (informal term meaning to criticise heavily) and 'pan' is present in the answer.
'a' is within the answer.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
(Other definitions for panatella that I've seen before include "source of smoke" , "Slender cigar" , "One smoker lights" , "Kind of cigar" , "that's smoked" .)