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Electoral MESS
May. 7th, 2010 08:54 pmI dunno if anyone outside of the UK really heard what an absolute shambles this election was.
Thousands of people - myself included - didn't get to vote because the registers weren't updated, the queues were too long and the stations understaffed or the stations ran out of ballot papers. To be turned away and told you cannot vote because of the professional unpreparedness of the event is shocking.
How can this be a democracy if you can be told you're not allowed to cast your vote? So your station has run out of ballot papers? Well, it's not like you can go to another polling station! You're registered at one, and can only vote there. If the queue takes you out past 10pm, your polling station's register isn't updated or the ballot papers run out you can't go somewhere else and do it.
And I'm not talking about this happening at just one polling station. It was up and down the nation.
Thousands of votes weren't cast, so thousands of votes have not been counted.
Hopefully, with the result of a hung parliament, we will get electoral reform (the party with the most votes actually winning the election? OUTRAGEOUS!) in time for when they dissolve and call another election - because if this is a democracy, that is what has to be done in the interest of fairness and democracy itself.
In other news, the BNP and UKIP still hold zero seats and are 100% powerless, if not obnoxiously loud and rather annoying. Jimmy Carr's assessment of Nick Griffin and the BNP on last night's Alternative Election couldn't have been funnier or more accurate. <3 Jimmy Carr.
Other than that, I can almost say I'm ashamed to live in a country where 45% of eligible voters don't bother, and a 65% turn out means too many have come and you must be prepared to be turned away.
At least we've got John Barrowman, though.
Thousands of people - myself included - didn't get to vote because the registers weren't updated, the queues were too long and the stations understaffed or the stations ran out of ballot papers. To be turned away and told you cannot vote because of the professional unpreparedness of the event is shocking.
How can this be a democracy if you can be told you're not allowed to cast your vote? So your station has run out of ballot papers? Well, it's not like you can go to another polling station! You're registered at one, and can only vote there. If the queue takes you out past 10pm, your polling station's register isn't updated or the ballot papers run out you can't go somewhere else and do it.
And I'm not talking about this happening at just one polling station. It was up and down the nation.
Thousands of votes weren't cast, so thousands of votes have not been counted.
Hopefully, with the result of a hung parliament, we will get electoral reform (the party with the most votes actually winning the election? OUTRAGEOUS!) in time for when they dissolve and call another election - because if this is a democracy, that is what has to be done in the interest of fairness and democracy itself.
In other news, the BNP and UKIP still hold zero seats and are 100% powerless, if not obnoxiously loud and rather annoying. Jimmy Carr's assessment of Nick Griffin and the BNP on last night's Alternative Election couldn't have been funnier or more accurate. <3 Jimmy Carr.
Other than that, I can almost say I'm ashamed to live in a country where 45% of eligible voters don't bother, and a 65% turn out means too many have come and you must be prepared to be turned away.
At least we've got John Barrowman, though.
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