h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Lembit Opik is out!

I think I'm going to have to call it a night and head to bed soon... will be able to find out everkything in the morning... nearly up to about 100 declared thus far, but not really any obvious patturns as to where quite exactly its going...

I liked Lembit...

Me too..very Prbobaly fall asleep on sofa...

Nighty night all...

That's a very well cut suit that Jeremy Vine's wearing.....

Goodnight, Effers and 2legs.

I always liked hung parliaments, for the reasons anhaga outlined. My reading of the fear of them (in NZ at least) is that the old boys in charge of the finances don't like them because they have less power. This gets spun as 'instability' but it's not really.

What's been going on with people not being able to vote because there were too many at the polling stations at the end of the day? That's been getting a bit of coverage here. They're saying that lots of people went to the polls late and in bigger numbers and the polling stations couldn't cope.

Yes, exactly. I sympathise with both sides really - it's awful to be disenfranchised when you've made the effort to vote, but at the same time, the conditions in the polling stations can't be changed. They can't open past 10pm.

The commentary here is that the turnout is higher than normal, and later than normal, but that both of those things were predicted. So it's not the problem of the people running the polling stations on the ground, but rather the people that planned them.

It wouldn't occur to me on polling day to go early in case it got too busy to vote, but then we usually have a pretty high turnout anyway.

Well, yes and no - people who've been given a ballot paper can cast their vote even after 10pm. So at some polling stations they took them in and made sure they gave them ballot papers before that - in others they turned them away.

I remember it happening before in at least one constituency - it's not entirely the first time.

It's not clear how many wards that's happened in yet.

Whilst those places where they ran out of ballots and couldn't cope with people not bringing the polling cards that we have no obligation to bother with, have been irresponsible and incompetent, those voters that did not take advantage of the fact the polling booths were open for 13 hours of the day haven't got a huge amount of my sympathy.


They're still saying there is not a pattern.
There is.

I know what you mean, Jack - but if, as some of them say they were, they'd been queueing for an hour or more, I don't think they turned up unreasonably late.

Z suggested that increasing numbers of people work further away from where they live than before, and so fewer had the time to vote on the way to work. People who turned up at 9:00 pm - an hour before polling stations closed - were unable to vote in some instances. And some polling stations ran out of ballot papers. That is unforgivable given that you can only vote at one polling station, so they know exactly what the total number of voters could be.

Oooh - Fermanagh/South Tyrone closest constituency so far? 8 votes in it, now going on to a recount...

Yes, the news here was talking about people that had been queuing up to vote and couldn't.

>>you can only vote at one polling station<<

How does that work? Do you have to tell them in advance what polling station you will vote at? That must be inconvenient or impossible for many people.

I remember doing a 60 mile round trip to vote once.

It's a good point, though they don't immediately leap out as commuter towns.

Don't get me wrong I mostly come down on the view that it's disgraceful organisation in some wards.

Kea, the way it works is you are allocated a place to vote based on where you register your address.

Polling stations are usually in local halls, so in places like primary schools, village halls, community halls, maybe sports centres.

You receive a polling card telling you where your polling station is, with a map.

If you cant attend in person, then you can nominate a proxy vote - whereby you tell someone how you want to vote and they attend the polling station on your behalf. You can also request a postal vote.

Oh, ok. Here you can vote at any polling station in your electorate I think, or if you are out of the electorate you just cast a special vote. But then we vote on a Saturday when it's more likely that people won't be at home.

Do you get time off to vote, given it's during the week?