Voters turned away

[LazyGun]

Just wondered what ABers thought about the fact that voters were barred by the clock from voting in some constituencies. Personally, I do not think such incidents do anything but damage our international reputation as a democracy, or as a modern, first world country, and I think the Returning Officers should have been much more willing to use their discretion in those few areas where there were large queues of people wishing to vote.

Some of the electoral officials concerned blamed "high voter turnout" - which sounds a lame excuse to me - but even with the X-Factor style televised debates with their technicolour worms, the reported late surge in voter registration, and the introduction of relaxed postal voting rules, overall turnout was still only 65%.

Should we be content with a voter turnout of 65% do you think, or are there better ways of ensuring a larger, more representative response?

[trapped]

How would the people on here like to wait in a queue for over Two hours and then be tuned away from the Polling Station

[kinell]

it has been the same for very many years

there is 15 hours on a thursday during which you can personally vote

when i turned up to vote there were two old dears at a desk just inside the door (ignored those) then in the hall were two further desks of old dears.....

i handed my voting card over and one looked up the address and name and using a ruler carefully underlined my details and then says to the adjacent old dear some number and the adjacent old dear picks up a voting form and cross references it on a list and hands it over

i notice that the voting form has a reference number on it so i ask the next voter who has been processed if he will swap voting forms with me as being a secret ballot it should make no difference.......

the old dears are flapping at this point....

it is obvious taking into account the amount of time taken over a simple procedure that anyone who presents themselves at the door of a polling station before 10pm should be allowed in and vote even if the old dears take an hour or so to dilly around with the paperwork.....

we could even consider opening for voting at the weekend over two days......but that would be too sensible and upset the old brigade 'we have always done it like this'

[Sqad]

The irony of this, to me, is that when the Dole/Bush Miami vote counting fiasco was at it's height, the UK was taking the p1ss out of the American voting system, saying with a satisfied smile, that it couldn't happen in the UK.

I bet the Americans are now having a wry smile at the scenes, on TV,of UK voters being turned away from the Polling Stations.

[Tizzi24]

I think it's disgraceful that so many people couldn't vote. What if 90-100% of voters had turned out? Was it in Birmingham that the polling station had a "lock in" to enable people to vote after 10 pm? At least they had a bit of sense!

I think one of the first things the government should do is revise the voting laws and make them more prevalent to the 21st century.

[Coobeastie]

With 15 hours to vote, postal voting and proxy voting I really can't see why anbody couldn't have done so on the day.

Kinell i would imagine that the old dears were flapping at your suggestion of swapping voting slips because its against the law and would invalidate the entire count for that station.

The problem is you can never know how many people are going to turn out or when they are going to do so. If you've got 1000 on your register and they all turn up at 9pm then some of them aren't going to get a chance of voting.

[tufty7]

There was no excuse for the polling station that ran out of papers at all, that should be re run in my opinion if it was a close vote ,

Anyway back to the situation in question, This also should never have happened at all,

Although everyone having all day to vote I reckon and cannot believe the returning officers were not given instruction of what to do in this event , If the returning officer could not process these would be voters in a timely manner who may I add must feel very cheated then In my opinion a policeman should have been put at the end of the queue at 10 o'clock and no one else allowed to join it ,

Then these people could have been allowed to vote as they were in time . This would have made the most sense to me .

It is laffable that for donkeys years the ballot box and paper have worked extremely well, but with technology in its shadow its gone to pot , it needs updating to a secure system thats not open to abuse and corruption.

As for 65% turnout , thats rubbish , It basically means out of every 100 people legible to vote 35 people can't be bothered, I fully understand if people cannot make a choice , but for people not to be bothered with something that effects there day to day life , I don't understand ,

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.dailymail....asco-shame-world.html

This just about says it all, we are getting to be no better than a third world country.

The comments for this news report, echo my thoughts.

[doomey!]

It is a shame so many people didn't get to vote.

Maybe next time they should consider the postal vote ;)

[brianbee]

It makes you wonder why we spend millions going and supposedly supervising the running of elections around the world, when we can't do our own properly.

I heard the 'chair' of the Electoral Commission say on Radio 4 that the system is antiquated and was designed to cater for Victorian elections for 5 million voters instead of today's 45 million. Its a pity she didn't tell the people running the individual polling stations. It would be good to think that she won't be gettting her performance bonus at the end of the year, but I wouldn't bet on it.

[kestrelg]

I worked as Presiding Officer for many years on General and local elections ( I did it purely for the payment) . I am not a "jobsworth" but there are rules laid down of how the poll should be conducted and if each Polling centre did their own thing the system could not work. If the Poll clerks had allowed voting to continue after the closing time and the result was very close there could have been accusations of malpractice.
Therefore the only way the staff can operate is to the rules laid down.
Regarding the Sheffield queues I think you will find that it was stage managed by students. they arrived en masse late evening, many without polling cards thereby slowing down the process, there were those who were trying to vote in an area where they were not registered. This was a very intimidating situation for the 2 or 3 clerks on duty. If we are going to change voting procedures it needs to be done before the election not during it.