British Dopers, tell the rest of us about voting!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

A glitch in London seems to have deleted a number of names from some of the rolls.

What happens to these voters? Surely there’s a mechanism in place for voters who can’t vote because of bureaucratic hangups? Where I’m from they would not be able to vote on the machines, but they’d be given special emergency ballots on paper and their own little cardboard barrier and a pencil; once they voted, on a ballot that looks exactly the same as what’s on the machine, their envelopes would be sealed up into a special “affadavit ballot” pouch that would be opened and counted at the end of the day and/or as soon as their registration was verified with central HQ. I’m sure since the British are much more centralized they must have a similar system.

22

There’s no such system - they just don’t get to vote. The electoral register is the list of who is eligible to vote…if your name isn’t on it, for whatever reason, you don’t vote. Being entitled to be on the register isn’t enough. (It’s a legal obligation to register, with forms being sent to every household once a year…and it’s viewed as an individual responsibility to check your details are correct. Local libraries etc. hold copies of it.)

The advantage to this “if you’re name’s not down, you’re not coming in” approach is simplicity - and speed. The existence of provisional or affadavit votes would make it impossible for all counts to take place tonight (after all, the first MPs are annouced within an hour of polls closing), and there’s no possibility of weeks of legal wrangling holding up the final result.

And no, we don’t have as centralised a system as you may think. Local councils administer the electoral roll, not some central organisation.

23

Couple of facts:

a) My local polling station is the Salavation Army depot.

b) The first constituency to get it’s count in is almost always either Sunderland North or Sunderland South. They get very competitive about it.

24

Yep, it’s been Sunderland South the last few elections. It took 43 minutes last time. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/frontpage/4515173.stm

25

Only because when Macems count it goes “1, 2, 3, Many, Lots…”!

26

Heh heh. Cheap shot :wink: (in seriousness, it’s partly because so few of them bother to vote)

27

My polling station was my local primary school. Took less than two minutes, a simple cross on a piece of paper. The brother came with me; it was his first time voting, and he was insistent that he was going to use his vote. I’m so proud of him. That said, we’re in a fairly safe Labour constituency, so it probably won’t make too much difference.

28

My polling station was the meeting room at the local church. There was no one there at all when I went to vote this morning, which surprised me because we are a marginal Labour/Lib Dem: Birmingham Yardley. I did notice that the team at the polling station had a large bag of cakes to sustain them during the day.

29

Thanks for the answers, but it’s still strange to me that even if the voters HAVE made sure that their info is up-to-date, they can be casually disenfranchised by a mistake made by the administrators. Here the principle is the opposite–you have to bend over backwards to ensure the hard-won right to vote is exercised first, and worry about the legalities afterwards. Oh well.

All of the constituencies have names, huh? That is so cute! Here there’s so many people that we have to say “Assembly District 31” or “Congressional District 11” or something, and then when you get to the polling place each machine is set for an even smaller election district. Although if you don’t have those machines, of course, you just walk up to any old table.

Looks like you folks go to the same sorts of places we do, schools, churches, any old public space that you can stick a few booths in. I don’t why I got the impression there was some sort of National commission that administered all the elections, though.

30

With 600-odd constituencies, it’s not hard to give them all unique names. Especially Ynys Mon. Probably the divisions for local elections have some duplications, just never within a single council. (Note that we don’t have many "18th Street"s or MLK Avenues, either :wink: )

There’s a good live-update Flash map here: BBC NEWS | Election 2005 | Election Map

31

I can understand your (and the general American) point of view. I guess it comes down to a decision of what you want: a clear-cut decision within hours, or every last vote determined exactly? Neither is ideal - did the 2000 farce give anybody a sense of democratic power?

32

Voting’s simple in Canada, too. You can opt to register to vote (or update your registered address) by ticking a box on your tax return. This is a change from the previous practice of sending registrars door-to-door before every election. You can also register with the Returning Officer for your riding before an election or even at the poll on voting day.

If you’re registered, you get a card in the mail telling you where to vote and at which poll (there are typically 8-10 at each voting location, with voters grouped alphabetically at the different polls). You show up, go to the correct poll (they’re marked if you forgot you card), give your name and address, which one of the two pollworkers will draw a line through on the register, and get your ballot. The local community centre has been my polling station for Federal, provincial, and municipal elections in the last 10 years or so.

Everything is run by Elections Canada, which is an independant agency of Parliament and not under direct government control. Everybody gets the same type of paper ballot (the names are different for each riding), black background with the candidates’ names in white and a white circle to place your X with the pencil provided in the voting booth.

All of our ridings have names, too, ranging from the simple such as Halifax or Ottawa South, to such eyebrow-raising ones as West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country or Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques. Riding names are set by acts of Parliament, but changes proposed by the current MP from the riding are passed pretty much automatically, and some MPs seem determined not to leave any potential voters out of the riding name.

Ridings are contested by the 3 major parties: Liberal, Conservative, New Democratic Party (NDP), with the Bloc Québécois added in all Québéc ridings. There may or may not be fringe party candidates, from parties such as the Green Party (moving towards mainstream status in the last election), Communist Party, Marxist-Leninist Party, Canadian Action, and Marijuana Party (all running in my riding last election), or independant candidates.

If you follow Canadian politics from elsewhere, note that although the major national political parties also have provincial counterparts with the same party name, they are not necessarily connected, formally or informally, and may have significant policy differences. In some provinces, the major parties have no national counterparts. The national and provincial parties are pretty much absent from municipal politics, at least in any formal, organized fashion.

33

Not a bad result thus far, I think. Labour still in power with a much reduced majority. Tories have done better than I had hoped and the Lib Dems not so well. My constituency (Bournemouth West) is still solidly Conservative. I voted Lib Dem, the only possible challengerThe combined Lib Dem/Labour vote could have got the absentee f****r out, even without UKIP taking some of his vote.

A couple of BBC radio presenters were whinging this morning claiming they were prevented from voting. It seems that they had both registered for postal votes then changed their minds and wanted to vote in person. I don’t have any sympathy for them (especially since one of them was John Humphries) I prefer the simple approach to preventing fraud, i.e. if you’re not on the list you can’t vote. Getting a postal vote means you are off the list of those eligible to vote in person. Simple enough for more people to grasp.

34

I’m not sure Owlstretch will agree :slight_smile:
From the OP:

Actually the watchful gaze of Humpty Dumpty and the Incy Wincy Spider (I don’t know who put them in charge)

35

That’s no way to talk about John Prescott and David Blunkett.

36

I guess not but Owlie said he lived in Putney as I recall, so he’ll be fairly happy – the Tories have won this from Labour.

37

I managed to vote this year, despite not getting a polling card through the post. I was worried that I’d still be registered at my old address (or even worse not registered at all).

I just ambled in to the church and gave my address and name - no need to identify myself at all. (I did notice that the previous occupants were still down to vote from my house, so I suppose I could have found a couple of willing stooges to pretend to be them considering the security.)

PT

38

My constituency is Cambridge City, although I live in a leafy village. I was surprised to see 5 candidates on the ballot paper (you can see how much I prepared for this election) - I had the “leafy village” mentality and expected there to be just the three main candidates. However, there was a Green candidate, and a UKIP one, which surprised me. UKIP, in Cambridge? Oh well. Didn’t get my vote ;).

39

Well, old Boney Maroney of the Raving Monster Loonies fell a little short, although he did come in a respectable 9th out of 15 candidates!

Hey, thanks for the link–that pointillist map was really cool, and I was the first one on my block to know when the Outer Hebrides flipped to the Scottish National Party! :wink:

As I was watching the results, it occurred to me that it was easier for me to follow from America, time-wise. I mean, that’s nice that they keep the polls open until 10:00, but the results come in through the middle of the night and it must kind of put the kibosh on election night parties. Do people just go to bed and get the result when they wake up? I guess if the exit polls are always as accurate as they were yesterday there isn’t much to wait for anyway.

40

I see that someone has made history by achieving the lowest number of votes ever received at a General Election (well, in the modern era, at least, since universal suffrage).

The previous lowest was 5, achieved by several poor eejits but Catherine Taylor-Dawson, standing for the Vote for Yourself Rain Dream Ticket party in Cardiff North managed only the 1 vote.

And it wasn’t ever her own vote as the silly cow is not registered in that constituency!!