Election Update III

[sabremeister]

Yaay! The Greens got Brighton! That's better than the BNP, and they've been getting generally higher vote shares in other constituencies.

Keighley was supposed to return 90 minutes ago, but hasn't yet. There's no reason given, but I doubt it's a recount, it's more likely the local election count slowing things up.
EDIT: Just heard the Tories took Keighley by 3000 votes. Turnout 70%, so at least we made them fight for it. Lib Dem share up nearly 4%, Lab down 8%

What's with all these candidates for the "Christian Party"? Have they not learned from our own history (Bloody Mary, Cromwell, various Charleses and Williams, and so on), but also from recent American politics (this illustrates the point quite nicely, I think), that politics and religion should not mix? Nor should religion and education, or religion and anything official and organised.

I like the fact that the Monster Raving Loony Party candidate is standing under the word "Barking" at the Barking & Dagneham declaration. BNP came third, with nearly twice as much as the Lib Dems.

About the closed polling stations - they showed a vox pop of one of the turned-away voters at Sheffield. An 18 year-old, really excited about voting for the first time - turned away from the polling station when it shut at 10pm. She will probably never bother voting again. Electoral Commission: FAIL!

Comments

[cat63.livejournal.com]

Electoral Commission: FAIL!

I don't understand leaving it so late to vote though. surely not all those people were on bizarre shifts that meant they couldn't go to vote until after 9.30pm?

I mean, I agree that the polling stations should have been able to cope, but it seems to me that a bit less faffing about from the voters would have helped too.

[sabremeister]

As I understand it, it's a symptom of the vast impatience engendered by modern life. Many people are quoted as saying they came by after work and saw a huge queue, so they waited an hour or so, only to find there was still a queue, so they went away again and came back later later to find there was still a queue, but now it was 9pm. I'm not a very patient person, but I would find it preferable to stand in a queue at first attempt, than go away and come back, because I almost certainly would have planned it so that I would be on my way (or back from) somewhere when I visited the polling station, and coming back would be even more time consuming than just queueing like a good Englishman.

This is not a hard problem to solve: Hire more staff to man the polling stations; Have a series of bar-code scanners available to scan the unique bar-code that should be printed on each polling card. You simply walk in, scan your polling card wait for the invigilator to give you ballot papers after the computer system has done all the necessary processing, and vote. You can still have a paper register for those who've forgotten their polling card; Allow voting to continue after 10pm if there's still a queue (but not after midnight - there is only one Election Day), and if you're worried about voter contamination, prohibit the publication exit polls until midnight, and equip each polling station with a signal jammer to prevent people finding out the results of quick-to-declare constituencies. These are all problems which are easily solvable, and well within current technological capabilities. But to run out of ballot papers is just fucking irresponsible and moronically bad planning.

[cat63.livejournal.com]

I've read a bit more about it sincemy initial reply and it does seem as if some of the queues went on for far too long and more staff or perhaps even more polling stations were needed.

But to run out of ballot papers is just fucking irresponsible and moronically bad planning.

This, I agree with 100% though - it's not as if they haven't had time to prepare, for FSM's sake.