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AIBU?

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Original poster

To think it's your own fault and you've had ages to sort it!

202 replies

Hurryhurryhurry · 08/06/2016 10:59

Heard the news on the radio about up to 1 million people registering to vote yesterday... On the last day!
Then the site crashed and now many people are annoyed that they couldn't register and want the deadline to be extended.

Wtf! Aibu to think why did you leave it until yesterday?!

OP posts:
Original poster
Hurryhurryhurry · 09/06/2016 06:31

Nobody has said that mrsterry
Everyone who has a right to vote, has a right to vote. Nobody has said that people aren't worthy of a vote.
Just that people a stupid for leaving it until the last minute

OP posts:
ThumbWitchesAbroad · 09/06/2016 06:32

Well that has happened too - the electricity supply has failed because of excessive demand.

The site managers would have made reasonable provision for high volumes of traffic; they may not have realised just how many people would leave it til the last minute.

Original poster
Hurryhurryhurry · 09/06/2016 06:32

Anyway... You are American mrsterry so why do you care?

OP posts:
DoinItFine · 09/06/2016 06:34

They didn't leave it to the last minute.

The site went down hours before the deadline.

It is not at all stupid to expect the voter registration system to be legally compliant.

LineyReborn · 09/06/2016 06:34

So WHY did so many people leave it till the last few hours to register? What are the theories?

I watched the ITV debate and I don't think it did Farage any favours tbh.

LineyReborn · 09/06/2016 06:35

Sorry - I don't think Farage did himself any favours

DoinItFine · 09/06/2016 06:36

Are people stuoid and disorganised to imagine they can have a cup of tea after Coronation Street, or is it the job of the utility company to make sure that they can?

Sometimes systems go down.

But it is not wasteful to design imoortant systems so that they can handle higher loads.

It's just normal.

CoolforKittyCats · 09/06/2016 06:52

Sorry - I don't think Farage did himself any favours

Neither did Osborne last night. He got an absolute roasting.

CoolforKittyCats · 09/06/2016 06:53

It's also a bloody good thing because if registered to vote, presumably this will increase suffrage at other elections, too?

Not necessarily.

AugustaFinkNottle · 09/06/2016 07:12

Back in the dark ages, if the deadline to register was 7th June you would post your application by 5th June, it would arrive and be dealt with, job done: once your envelope was in the post box you knew that, bar the reasonably tiny chance of your letter going astray you would be registered. Ironically, the use of technology makes that less certain, particularly on the day of the deadline. Therefore if the means offered by the government for registering a vote actually prevented someone from registering their vote when they tried to do so at the correct time, it makes sense to extend the time limit.

SoupDragon · 09/06/2016 07:14

You are American mrsterry

Isn't she in Canada?

Lockheart · 09/06/2016 07:18

I think the same thing will happen on Thursday. Will it be extended again? And again? There's got to be a cut-off somewhere unfortunately. The same thing happens most polling days when 500 people rock up at 21:58 having had all day to do it and the three poor retirees running the station don't have a hope in hell of coping.

The server should have been able to cope - totally agree. But equally, personal responsibility has to come in somewhere and I don't think people should leave it til the last minute. I mean what if you'd had an emergency and couldn't get to a computer?

If you haven't registered, do it now. It takes two minutes and if you have time to be on MN then you have time to register. Go!

roundaboutthetown · 09/06/2016 07:18

A deadline is a deadline. You can't cut it short. If you cut it short, you are at fault, not the person who was there before the deadline. It's a fairly simple concept to understand... No, I wouldn't wait until the last minute, but then that's me. It's actually a fairly typical mentality for human beings to treat deadlines a bit like targets. I spend my life telling my children to get their homework done sooner rather than later, because you never know what might happen, otherwise...

AugustaFinkNottle · 09/06/2016 07:20

It's been extended now. So no excuses this time.

Even if the system goes down again?

WaspsandBeesSting · 09/06/2016 07:48

They can't keep extending it.

All registrations have to be checked. There has to be time etc to do this.

As pp have said there is ano extremely large number of people that are either registering when already registered or not eligible to vote.

These all need to be weeded out etc.

daisychain01 · 09/06/2016 08:05

Yup we only want shiny perfect people voting, none of yer riff-raff who can't get their act together.

And of course IT systems should always work right up to the deadline, with built-in capacity to deal with massive spikes in usage.

Now back in the real world .......

SpaceDinosaur · 09/06/2016 08:06

The number of people who are not registered to vote shocks and appalls me.

Being registered and choosing not to vote is absolutely an individual's right to decide.

Campaigns to get people to register to vote run for a long time in the lead up to a vote
Yet still
The people who are unregistered choose to ignore the post, the tv adverts, the billboards until mere hours before the deadline.

Idiots.

Perhaps we should ensure people are registered to vote when they turn 18 and people who emigrate to live here are registered when they become a citizen... Although that is expecting the government to nanny people more and removes the expectation that people should be able to do things for themselves.

Lynnm63 · 09/06/2016 09:15

I wonder if the deadline would have been extended if those late registering were most likely brexiters rather than remainers? Of course not!

AugustaFinkNottle · 09/06/2016 09:29

Does it matter? If it's physically possible to register voters two days later, surely it's a good thing that more people want to take part in the democratic process?

LurkingHusband · 09/06/2016 10:13

The site managers would have made reasonable provision for high volumes of traffic; they may not have realised just how many people would leave it til the last minute.

Sorry, but that is bollocks. A properly designed site would have been completely scalable. As demand grows, you just add more and more database and application servers to handle the demand. When did you last hear of Amazon or Google crashing ? And given that the UK government (apoparently) worships Google, you'd think they'd learn a thing or two.

If we want to talk about lack of planning, and leaving things to the last minute on this thread, it needs to be clear if we are talking about voting, or government IT projects.

This is what you get, when you live in a country where 14 and 15 year olds have career talks from 3 local universities over an evening none of which thought to bring any STEM speakers. However we do know that if you work hard in politics, you can get a job with a bank in New York.

Apparantly.

DoinItFine · 09/06/2016 10:22

If we want to talk about lack of planning, and leaving things to the last minute on this thread, it needs to be clear if we are talking about voting, or government IT projects.

Quite

It's OK for the people in power to be disorganised, but not the little people they supposedly answer to, according to many on this thread.

mummytime · 09/06/2016 11:03

The people who are unregistered choose to ignore the post, the tv adverts, the billboards until mere hours before the deadline.

Well I don't know how much of any of that my DC have seen. They watch little terrestrial TV (mainly netflix etc.), and there were no billboards in my town.
Lots may also have thought when there was a deadline to vote in April that that was it, they had lost their chance - not realising they still had time to vote this month. It used to be easier when one person could register everyone at an address.
And the changes haven't been that well publicised really, and registering to vote is not something taught in schools. Also lots of people might not be bothered about most elections, but realise this one is important.

MrsTerryPratchett · 09/06/2016 15:52

You are American mrsterry so why do you care? No, I'm fucking not.

Soupy has it right.

SoupDragon · 09/06/2016 17:01

#stalker

MrsTerryPratchett · 09/06/2016 17:09

You can stalk me any time Soupy my love. The OP, not so much.