to think that people turned away from voting should have got down there earlier?

[aloevera]

They've had all day. Or could have done a postal vote? Or am I too harsh?

I have always found it quiet whenever I have voted and so it wouldn't have occurred to me that you could turn up at 9pm and not get a vote. It wouldn't have occurred to me that I would have had to queue. People went at 6pm, saw the queue and did the sensible thing and went home to let it quieten down. My DH got back from a long day travelling (having been in queues a lot of the day)at 8pm. He walked down to vote before he ate, luckily no queue, but if there had been one he couldn't have stayed, I was cooking an omlette. He would have had to go back.
I had the several opportunities during the day-most people don't. It doesn't take much intelligence to work out that most people want to vote between 6pm and 10pm.
It is entirely reasonable, if the polls close at 10pm to be able to walk in at 9.50pm.
Perhaps election days should change to weekends.

i think everyone was surprised at how many turned up, driving around last last i saw queues outside lots of polling stations. btw dp raced to vote and got in at 9.40pm. he would have not been able to if it was clear to go in and out quickly.

He didn't apply for a postal vote-he didn't know that he would spend the day travelling.

When you put it like this

It's looking good

I'm always surprised that elections are held on working days. In Australia, voting is compulsory, and so it's always held on a Saturday to minimise the number of people who have to take time off work.

Seems to me that having it on a working day runs the risk of disenfranchising people who work long hours or don't have the work flexibility to come in late/leave early.

That map shows so clearly that Scotland should be independent.

yadefbu

everyone should be able to vote.

they should have kept polling stations open after 10pm to make sure everyone got to vote if thats what was needed.

agree having it on a work day seems bonkers

YABU - why leave it till the last minute?

We all know that cuts in spending are on the cards. Obviously, the first cut was in polling booth staff.

Joking aside, it is a disgrace that people have been disenfranchised.

If you are out of the country MrsGuyOfGisbourne and don't get home until 8pm you don't have a lot of choice! You don't apply for a postal vote in case volcanic ash should delay your visit! (DH should have been home on Wednesday)
If the polls close at 10pm you should be able to turn up at 9.50, in the same way that it is entirely reasonable to expect to buy something from a supermarket 10 minutes before closing time.
Not everyone has the luxury of choice of when to go.

Thank you alouiseg, I am aware of the results but it's not really what this thread is about, is it?

Unless you're here to gloat that most of the disenfranchised voters are probably young and left-wing, so boosting the Tory %?

DH was saying that they should have taken everyone in the queue and locked them inside until they had all been able to vote. Which would have worked 10 years ago. But nowadays almost everyone in the queue would have had mobile phones to get in touch with the outside world. Lots of people would have had the exit poll data up on their iphone/Blackberry. So it wouldn't work any more.

Our polling station was really disorganised. I went early with the children even then, when it was quiet, it wasn't obvious that there were two sets of desks to get your ballot paper. I warned DH that he would have to go to the less obvious desk to get his, and, even with that knowledge, he didn't see it for quite a while. The bolling booths were almost empty, because there was such a delay in getting the papers - loads of people were in the wrong queue.

Depends on who you're talking about when you say unreasonable - shift workers or commuters may usually have time to vote for a couple of hours at each end of the day, and therefore not have thought it necessary to organise a postal vote, but the queues were unprecedented and I certainly have never had to queue for any election in the last 20 years.

However, people who have had all day and only turn up at the last minute don't get any sympathy from me. Ditto people who don't bring their polling card or ballot papers - in my constituency, the ballot papers were sent out to voters in a separate mailout from the polling cards, but we had everything we'd need to just turn up. Bring them with you, people!

I sorted myself out a postal vote because being due to pop on April 26, the chances were I'd either be looking after a tiny baby, in labour, or too close to popping to dare leave the house...

Lots of people choose not to have postal votes because they are much more complicated to arrange. The whole point of the 'cross in a box' system is that it doesn't discriminate against those with minimal literacy. Being illiterate isn't meant to be a barrier to voting.

I know it's possible to get someone to help you apply for a postal vote, but it is more complicated and if you are not confident with filling in forms it might be difficult for you. Whereas, if you go to the polling station, you will be given the paper and you can ask for help if you don't understand how to fill it in, or can't read it.

I know it sounds like a silly point to make but I think people genuinely don't realize how many already-marginalized people get further discriminated against in situations like this.

Skihorse people are entitled to vote in a democracy and I think this is absolutely an 'entitlement' that is valid.

As a child minder I started work at 7am in time for my first shift worker to drop off her dcs I worked til 7:30pm in time for the last dc to be collected then went to vote I was lucky it was only short queue at our polling station. Maybe they should allow people to vote at a different polling station we have one closer to our address than our allocated one, in fact we had to walk past two polling stations to get to our dedicated one. My ds2 goes to bed between 6 & 7pm so if there had been longer queues he would have been miserable and grumpy. I would not want to queue for upto 3 hours with a tired child.

The longest people work is 7am til 10pm so if it was extended til 11pm it may solve problem or if you could vote at a different polling station nurses etc could nip out of work on their lunch breaks

My neighbour opted for a postal vote as she was not sure if she could get to the polling station but had to take her postal vote to a polling station as it did not arrive at her house in time to post it which defies the point of a postal vote

goldenbear They were given 15 hours or a postal vote. Which bit wasn't understood?

I would have initially said YANBU, but after reading more about it I think you are.

It's easy to think that people should have had loads of time, especially if your voting station was as quiet as ours or you could vote during the day. However, I think loads of people were really caught out by the huge queues which materialised this year, some of which seem to have been building from early evening.

Pre-children, I have voted after dinner so about 9pm and I guess that's what a lot of people did through choice or necessity.

YABU.

Lots of people dont have "all day" - and it's reasonable to expect that the amount of voters registered would be taken into account and the right number of people put on accordingly.

My local station had one person, two booths and thousands of people queuing. Why on earth would anyone anticipate having to queue for up to three hours to vote? It's just ridiculous.

Hopefully lessons will be learned.
Either there were too many people for one polling station, or not enough staff or the day should change from a Thursday to a weekend.
It was much easier when people worked near home. Lots of people commute and have left for work before 7am and are unlikely to get home before 7pm. They then have meals to cook, children to put to bed etc-they don't want to queue for over an hour to put a cross in a box!

Exactly they were given 15 hours to vote, not 11, not 12, not 13, not 14, 15, so why should you have to factor in time needed to queue, especially as this is unprecedented!

I have never had to queue to vote in previous elections and can not recall my parents doing so.

They were promised 15 hours and a postal vote. What they were given was less than 15 hours.

If there are huge queues at polling stations then there has been an organisational cock-up and it's unfair to blame it on voters who expected (on the flimsy evidence of... umm... every other election so far) that it would have been properly organised and there wouldn't be significant queues.

YABU.

It is their legal right to vote until 10PM and they were disenfranchised illegally due to council cock ups.

That is wrong, and everyone who is responsible for that should be sacked immediately.

YABU

I used to work 14 hour shifts as an NHS staff nurse and was unable to vote in a council election as the polling station did not open early enough, or close late enough for me to get there - postal voting was not available.
A lot of nurses finish work at 9pm or even 9.30 having been there since 7am, I don't see that they were wrong to think it would be ok to go vote at 9.30 when they were meant to have til 10.

There must be plenty of other people who were geniunely unable to go earlier. I'm sure there were some chancers who showed up at five to ten but I bet they sloped off home rather than have a rant at the returning officers!

Don't understand why the "students with no cards" weren't just told to feck off though...