Imagine it happening here: voters turned away at polling stations as they close
Published:
May 6, 2010 at 11:33pm
It looks like he's the one
There were queues outside polling stations as they closed at 10pm. People were left standing there with their ballot papers. Doesn’t it seem weird to us?
I can’t understand why Britain goes to the polls during office hours, when the vast majority of electors are working and then begin jamming the polling-stations after 5.30pm, which means that most of the traffic must be processed in just four and a half hours.
True, the polling-stations opened at 7am, but how many people can get there before work while getting the children to school and the rest of the morning hysteria?
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Logic might not have been a policy for none of the political parties.
More doom and gloom for the EU. Here he comes!
The EU has its own problems at the moment, none of which is of British making. You actually have to thank God that Tony Blair or Gordon Brown did not take Britain into the Eurozone. That would have caused sleepless nights for Mr. JC Trichet and Ms. Angela Merkel, considering the huge deficits and national debt that Mr. Brown managed to accumulate.
Actually, I find nothing wrong with the Tories’ policies about Europe. It was a Conservative government that took the UK into Europe, yet they maintain that sovereignty lies with the national parliament.
Latest Exit polls are showing Cons 305, Lab 255, Lib-Dems 61 and the rest 29. Seems like a hung parliament, although it’s been reported that Cameron is ready to go for a minority government. Have we seen the last of Brown? Going to be a long night!
Actually it’s a big mess. Unless the Tory swing is greater than the exit polls suggest, it could well be a Lab-LibDem hung spa. I cannot see the Tories and LibDems form a government. Question is, will Labour and LibDems together manage 326 seats? It seems not. Might as well take in Cymru seats, or even the five Sinn Fein MPs (who don’t take an oath to the Queen so they don’t vote).
> who don’t take an oath to the Queen so they don’t vote
When are they going for republic? I’m still baffled at how Blair sold Labour’s principles for better electability.
[Daphne – Hux republic! What do you have in mind – a Bolshevik revolution? The vast majority of people there are either delighted with their royal family or indifferent to the system. And the rest have the good sense to know what amazing things the Crown does for ‘brand Britain’.]
Daphne, watching a long queue being turned away from voting on BBC–Incredible! Zimbabwe?
Showing the poor state the UK has been reduced to after 13 years of New Labour government!
[Daphne – If that were really the case, Cameron would have had a clear run. But he didn’t. He is just 50 seats ahead of Brown.]
Same with the US (Tuesdays). The theory goes that the ‘powers that be’ prefer people to lose interest in politics and this is just one aspect – making it harder for them to vote.
[Daphne – There’s just been somebody from the Electoral Commission on television, making a fuss and saying that the system is not designed to cope with high voter turn-out and “massive interest”, and that this means changes will have to be made.]
The Sunderland Swifts are increasing the possibility of having a stable Tory government.
I voted this evening after work. I just walked in, said hello, my name is Andrew and I live in XX, and that’s it. I voted. No ID card, no double checking by all the party agents.
And yet, no one cheats.
Mur aghmel hekk, Malta!
I’m drunk, and to me it seems he’s the one:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/William1.jpg
What also amazed me is how casual the elections seem in the UK.
No perspex to bang on, no policemen to be seen, ballot boxes arriving by car, boxes arriving in some counting halls within 2 minutes, children running around the boxes, no security rails, votes being put in supermarket baskets, no proof of identity, candidates with brightly coloured rosettes standing on a platform while results are being read, no excitement in seeing votes mount in pigeon holes…
I imagine the counting of votes is double checked but it all seems so strange to us Maltese.
I also can’t understand an election system where number of seats don’t represent number of votes.
It’s Gt Britain – they were always a slightly eccentric race.
Some cases of electoral fraud have been reported. The Afghans are sending a delegation to ensure that the election process was duly followed.
“I can’t understand an election system where number of seats don’t represent number of votes.”
It is obvious, therefore, that you don’t understand the Maltese system. Under this system it is possible for a party to obtain up to 16% of the vote and yet not gain a single seat in parliament.
Seems the UK system is different from ours. Here if you present yourself to vote before closing time you are entitled to vote – seems not so in UK. But surely the farce was that at a certain polling station they did not have enough ballot papers.
Anyone can really walk out to lunch, go to a polling boot pub and vote while the order for fish, fries, beer and sticky toffee pudding is being prepared. So relaxed!
Latest results show Labour seats not so far behind the Tories that a coalition with LibDems would not beat said Tories. Considering Bigotgate and Brown’s overall popularity (in the pits), Labour have actually done very well.
[Daphne – The fact that Labour did very well shows that Brown’s popularity was NOT in the pits, but only that this was the received wisdom.]
Your point would be true if it were a ‘presidential’ style election, which it was not, despite the three debates. It appears that voters in the UK are influenced more by their local MPs and local issues then by the national leadership, hence Labour’s resilience.
I voted at 9am in an empty hall with just three representatives and an unbelievable relaxed environment. Can you imagine anything like that in Malta?