So all of these people who wern't able to vote,

But the Chester result is well and truly challengeable on these grounds -- 600 people were denied their right to vote despite having polling cards, because the polling station used an old register. The margin of victory was 549.

As it happens the Sheffield Hallam eward vote result would be not affected; it was a safe Lib Dem ward and Nick Clegg won by thousandfs of votes. Even if all those unable to vote there had voted the finl result would not have changed.

snap Claire, I do not understand this attitude. It has not happened before in this country and yet voters were expected to guess that huge queues would suddenly become a problem?
have seen in other threads that some polling stations were working at full capacity and beyond from 6pm. If those who turned up at 8:30pm had turned upat 6pm then there wold have been even bigger queues at 6pm and still some people wouldnt have been able to vote.

cnn interview of sheffield student

I believe that if you have your ballot paper in hand at 10pm, then you are allowed to vote.

As for splitting students from residents - in our polling station we were separated by address to collect our ballot papers. In our case it was done by road name, but I can imagine that doing all halls of residence on one list would make sense.

Hang on a minute.

If people GOT to the polling station in time, ie before 10pm, they should have been allowed to wait in the queue.
I agree it would be silly to allow people who arrived later than 10, still to vote - that was their problem.

But people in the queue? Totally out of order to deny them their vote.

Why should people have to explain why they couldn't go to vote before 9.30pm? I'm baffled at this attitude, really.

bbc q&a

Thousands over the country might not be significant when it is divided between the affected seats.

if it is true about the 1000's then that is a national disgrace.

Why do we need exit polls anyway, other than to feed the media frenzy and provide overtime for Dimbleby et al?

Ban exit polls and have the polling station open for 24 hours, with council staff employed to run them in shifts.

I do feel very sorry for the folk who queued for hours only to be told they couldn't vote.

I left for work before the polling station opened, but was lucky enough to finish in time to vote on my way home.

Ds actually came home from university 150 miles away to vote, stayed overnight and went back in the morning. Most of his friends were very keen to vote this time, so I feel sorry for the students too.

On the radio they were saying that thousands of voters have been affected by it.........that's significant. If it were 50 people or so, then that's one thing, but if 'thousands' is true (was bbc) then that does change things. It's an embarrassment.

I know someone who couldn't vote. She waited 45 minutes queuing before being turned away.

She had no way of knowing that by arriving at 9:15pm that she would not be able to vote.

It is unfair that polling stations were ill equipped to deal with people arriving to vote.

Clumsy - yes if I was working I would have to leave home before 7am and home at 9.30pm - that's a normal shift! Thankfully I don't have to do it anymore!!

I am very sorry for those people who queued and couldn't get to vote. It is very frustrating .

I am appalled that a polling station ran out of ballot papers. That's just a pure admin cock-up and who-ever was managing that area should be sacked, good and proper, and a new election should be run in that constituency.

I am utterly horrified that registered voters in Chester were unable to vote, because the council was using an old copy of the register. Folk with voting cards were turned away from the polling stn. Again, administrative shambles, and Chester should hold a by-election.

But where folk were turned away from the polling station because it was closing at 10, well that is a different matter. The polling station has to close at some time, if not 10, then when? Midnight? So what would you do if people left it until even later, and were queing at midnight.

Someone on here said she was working until 9:30, couldn't go any earlier, But the polling stations opened at 7 a.m. Were you working all the 14 1/2 hours up to then?

Yes maybe some polling stations were understaffed, but the last few elections have attracted TINY turnouts < 50%.
And OK, those of you who said "they should have got more staff in when queues formed", where from? If you are a council employee, just getting the kids tea ready, are YOU going to turn out because your boss rings and says "There are queues at the polling station. Pls go and help process the voters NOW" ?

We should all regard voting with more priority. If more folk had gone before work, or queued up on the way home, things would have been easier. I suspect a lot of folk went home, had tea, watched telly, ummed and ahhhed, then thought "I'll go and vote"

A lady (in Lewisham I think) said that she turned up to vote at 8:30 pm, queued for 1.5 hours, and was three places away from the ballot box at 10 pm when they closed voting.

This is disgusting. Many of these people did not turn up to vote at 9:50 pm. Maybe this did not have an effect on the overall result, but everyone should be entitled to vote. I would be very angry if it was me, as it was I had to queue for 30 minutes at 7pm. The only difficulty for me was that I had a fractious 6 year old with me. I would have been devastated if I could not have voted after queuing.

I think that electoral reform will come from this hung parliament, whoever forms the government. I have a feeling that technology will have a part to play in the new system, whether it is PR or not.

It sounds like there wouldnt have been any difference to the overall result even if everyone had been able to vote.
I heard reports that in Sheffield Hallum there had been a couple of hundred people unable to vote, but with a 15,000 majority, a couple of hundred votes would have had no impact on the result.

hatwoman - am talking about for the future, clearly last night it could not have been done but things need to change.

what should be done about it now with regards to last night - my heart says a revote, my head says that would throw us into a dangerous turmoil.

there was a comment that a lot of students didn't have their polling cards (they may never have received them). they don't need them to vote, but it slows the process down, so that would explain them going to a different queue, as they would need to be processed differently. sheffield apparently had a prob with students turning up without polling cards. obv. they should have had more staff to deal with it, but it was an unprecedented number who turned up.

and if it is "the law" that polling stations HAVE to close at 10pm no matter what, that law needs to be changed.

any constituency where the winner won by less than the number of people turned away, should be forced to a re-vote imo.

Most polling stations have separate tables of people to give you your forms for different addresses.

So I walked into my polling station, two tables with 3 clerks each, went to the one without the queue, but because of my address had to go to the other one and wait for the slow-reading clerks to find the various names.

I hope that's all that happened with the students and it was just done on postcodes, but even so it's an appalling cockup and they should have called for backup at 7pm as an emergency.

they just had a student on the tv who said that an officer was directing "students" to one queue and "residents" to another.

reported where? I don't believe this for a second

TDWP-They knew they were students because of their addresses. The students were registered at the student villages. That is what is being reported.

re "the queue should have been closed at 10pm - but everyone in it allowed to vote" that would have been illegal - the law only permits people to vote after 10 if they have their ballot cards - the people in the queue are queueing to get their ballot cards.

the polling stations were clearly massively understaffed and when queues started building up failed to do anything about it. it only takes abt a minute, less even, to get your card once you reach the desk so it's quite incomprehensible that this happened.