Hung, drawn and quartered

[tamaranth]

- 8.2 million is to 6.4 million as 248 is to 51.
- the BNP got twice as many votes as the Green Party.
- on narrow margins: Glenda Jackson wins by 42 votes. I suspect there are others with even narrower margins of victory.
- when I am old I shall wear purple.

Also, appalled by voters being turned away from polling stations. One ... official said the turnout had probably been the highest for 30 years and "it caught us out". FFS! It might've surprised you, mate, but it didn't surprise many other people. (At least not people who weren't in charge of polling stations.)

Can haz parliamentary hangings now pls?

Comments

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

- the BNP got twice as many votes as the Green Party.

I don't believe that would happen if we had PR. Brighton and Barking show that people turn out to vote for the Greens if there's a chance they could win, but they turn out to vote against the BNP if there's a chance they could.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

There are going to have to be re-runs in some seats, because voters have been disenfranchised through no fault of their own. I heard someone from the Electoral Commission this morning say that the polls could have been left open longer in the circumstances, but no-one told the local officials that!

Well, we seem to have a 'hung' parliament!

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I don't want Cameron to have power. :_(
And, indeed, purple.

[brisingamen.livejournal.com]

official said the turnout had probably been the highest for 30 years and "it caught us out".

a) at any point a voting station should be prepared for the fact that everyone registered to vote there will turn up to vote, and possibly all at once. (There should be no way a place can run out of ballot papers.)

b) It was was stone cold, bleeding obvious from 7 a.m. that voting stations, especially the urban ones, were going to get hammered. The queuing was a bit of a give-away, surely. There is no excuse for any of what happened in places like Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, London, etc.

The Electoral Commission is correct about the law, but the returning officers are guilty of complacency and of a failure to facilitate voting for everyone who wanted to vote, and to me that is utterly inexcusable. They should have emptied the council offices and got extra people in there, they should have been commandeering rooms to use as voting booths if they couldn't get hardboard to build booths, they should have been running it out of the back of cars if that's what it took to get those people processed. I'm pissed off about Lib Dem losses but I'm far, far angrier about this failure to give people the votes they're entitled to.

[brisingamen.livejournal.com]

But the Electoral Commission also said that the law states that the boxes must be closed at 10, which is true, so I wish they'd make up their minds.I'm with the returning officers who threw caution to the winds and kept their stations open. I happen to think that everyone entitled to a vote should be allowed to vote if they're standing in a queue waiting to vote.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

Some of the polling stations made a point of getting everyone inside with a ballot paper by 10, even if it meant frightful crowding and more queuing. It can be done ...

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

I'm wondering whether the problems at the polling stations are partly due to people expecting to be able to go home, have dinner, and then vote: in other words, everyone is trying to turn up at the same time.

As a data point, when I voted, the polling station was emptier than at previous elections, even though it was at the same time that I usually go. But that was 09:30 - and for people who go to work earlier than me, that's perhaps not on any more.

But I think we'll have to wait for analysis. Something changed, but it would boggle me if that change was actually less capacity. Perhaps there were more possibilities on the ballots, and voters were taking longer to decide.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

The argument appears to be that once exit polls are published, any votes arriving thereafter will be affected, and that therefore potential voters must be rejected. It sounds an odd idea to me, but I suppose you could have hundreds of tactical voters waiting till the very last instant before jumping one way or another.

A partial solution would be to ban the publication of the exit polls for an extra hour or two. Have an official closing time of 22:00, permit anyone who is at the station (not necessarily inside) by then to queue, and clear that backlog before the exits come out.

[brisingamen.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Good returning officers understand what they're supposed to be doing. Bad returning officers wave their hands in the air and say 'but so many people ...' Never mind stringing up politicians, there are a few returning officers who should be looking around nervously.

[brisingamen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I heard that argument last night, but I don't think it flies. The US seems to cope with having elections running across multiple time zones, people being able to vote for weeks before and so on. And given it was clear quite early on that the turnout was unprecedented, steps could have been taken. It's just that they weren't, and that really is appalling.

[brisingamen.livejournal.com]

in other words, everyone is trying to turn up at the same time.

In a lot of places the morning queues were much larger than normal, and indeed in many places there were queues where there wouldn't normally be, which should be a first indicator. Then queuing seemed to start again in the late afternoon, suggesting people coming out of work and wanting to vote, a time when you'd expect voting stations to be prepared for a rush. I've seen reports of big Sheffield queues developing around 5.30, which would fit, and people queuing for a couple of of hours mid-evening, which suggests the system was already under strain. And after that, I think it just got worse and worse. Here, if we'd not had postal votes, and were commuting, we'd have had to have waited until gone 7 to go to vote, and if us and all the other long-distance commuters had all started queuing then ...

But as you say, we'll have to wait for analysis. I'm dying to know what did go wrong.

[ramtops.livejournal.com]

Absolutely this.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

I suspect there are others with even narrower margins of victory.

Now in: Michelle Gildernew for Sinn Fein in Fermanagh & South Tyrone has a majority of 4, after a number of recounts. That there was no Unionist candidate there seems to have given an Independent candidate a real boost.