By David Williams
7 May 2010
Polling stations across the country were thrown into disarray last night after high turn-outs, thinly spread resources and large volumes of postal votes stretched the UK’s antiquated electoral system to breaking point.
When the polls closed at 10pm, queues of voters were turned away unable to cast their votes in cities including London, Sheffield, Liverpool and Manchester.
An Electoral Commission investigation is underway to identify exactly what went wrong.
A source close to the counts told Public Finance that councils were under too much political pressure to conduct a rapid overnight count. ‘There may be some indication that councils got pressed into holding their counts as fast as possible’, the source said.
‘Given that, it’s possible to envisage a situation where your resources are thinly spread on the ground, and you take people away from polling stations so they can handle postal votes at the town hall.’
In Liverpool, where polling stations in the Wavertree constituency temporarily ran out of ballot papers, acting returning officer Colin Hilton put the difficulties down to a ‘very high turnout’ compared with recent elections.
But, he emphasised, ‘every elector who wanted to vote had the opportunity to do so before the polls closed’.
A spokesman for the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives said that many returning officers had closed the doors to polling stations at 10pm on the dot for fears of legal challenges.
‘The easiest way to get in trouble is to keep the doors open for another ten minutes,’ he said, adding that the polling system is little changed since Victorian times, and is in need of reform.
Similar concerns were raised by the Electoral Commission, which has long been calling for a system overhaul.
The Solace spokesman added that some constituencies with big student populations had faced large numbers of first-time voters unsure of how the system worked, holding up the voting process.
He also said councils could have been unexpectedly overwhelmed by large amounts of late-arriving postal votes, delivered to town halls as polls closed. There were about 150,000 last-minute registrations for postal votes across the country.
Some commentators have praised the approach taken by the London Borough Lewisham, which was in accordance with electoral law but was not adopted by other returning officers. Queuing voters were issued with ballot papers before 10pm and locked in the polling station to complete their votes after the deadline passed.
7 May 2010
Polling stations across the country were thrown into disarray last night after high turn-outs, thinly spread resources and large volumes of postal votes stretched the UK’s antiquated electoral system to breaking point.
When the polls closed at 10pm, queues of voters were turned away unable to cast their votes in cities including London, Sheffield, Liverpool and Manchester.
An Electoral Commission investigation is underway to identify exactly what went wrong.
A source close to the counts told Public Finance that councils were under too much political pressure to conduct a rapid overnight count. ‘There may be some indication that councils got pressed into holding their counts as fast as possible’, the source said.
‘Given that, it’s possible to envisage a situation where your resources are thinly spread on the ground, and you take people away from polling stations so they can handle postal votes at the town hall.’
In Liverpool, where polling stations in the Wavertree constituency temporarily ran out of ballot papers, acting returning officer Colin Hilton put the difficulties down to a ‘very high turnout’ compared with recent elections.
But, he emphasised, ‘every elector who wanted to vote had the opportunity to do so before the polls closed’.
A spokesman for the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives said that many returning officers had closed the doors to polling stations at 10pm on the dot for fears of legal challenges.
‘The easiest way to get in trouble is to keep the doors open for another ten minutes,’ he said, adding that the polling system is little changed since Victorian times, and is in need of reform.
Similar concerns were raised by the Electoral Commission, which has long been calling for a system overhaul.
The Solace spokesman added that some constituencies with big student populations had faced large numbers of first-time voters unsure of how the system worked, holding up the voting process.
He also said councils could have been unexpectedly overwhelmed by large amounts of late-arriving postal votes, delivered to town halls as polls closed. There were about 150,000 last-minute registrations for postal votes across the country.
Some commentators have praised the approach taken by the London Borough Lewisham, which was in accordance with electoral law but was not adopted by other returning officers. Queuing voters were issued with ballot papers before 10pm and locked in the polling station to complete their votes after the deadline passed.
