Reports of Queues of people unable to vote?

[hodgepodge 10]

No, it's much more important that Tesco so if Tesco can manage to do it then the government damn well should do.

 

My husband gets up at five every morning and works a 12 shift getting home at around 8pm. In his normal working day he only has a two hour window to vote. We went down to vote at around 8pm, we queued for around 40 mins to vote but considered going home and coming back later as we thought it might be quieter - if we had done that then we wouldn't have been able to vote, we would have been turned away.

 

Voting is a right, not a privilege. If you turn up at the voting station within the alloted hours you should be able to vote. People who say 'you should have turned up earlier' are totally moronic. How can you judge that every single person who was turned away was just there late because they couldn't be bothered to go earlier.

 

And this has never, ever happened before so why should people have thought that they had to turn up early because otherwise they'd be turned away.

 

To be honest I'm a bit more worried that people who can make stupid statements like yours are allowed to vote rather than people who tried to vote in the last hour the stations were open.

 

I agree completely.

[Dinkey 10]

No, it's much more important that Tesco so if Tesco can manage to do it then the government damn well should do.

 

My husband gets up at five every morning and works a 12 shift getting home at around 8pm. In his normal working day he only has a two hour window to vote. We went down to vote at around 8pm, we queued for around 40 mins to vote but considered going home and coming back later as we thought it might be quieter - if we had done that then we wouldn't have been able to vote, we would have been turned away.

 

Voting is a right, not a privilege. If you turn up at the voting station within the alloted hours you should be able to vote. People who say 'you should have turned up earlier' are totally moronic. How can you judge that every single person who was turned away was just there late because they couldn't be bothered to go earlier.

 

And this has never, ever happened before so why should people have thought that they had to turn up early because otherwise they'd be turned away.

 

To be honest I'm a bit more worried that people who can make stupid statements like yours are allowed to vote rather than people who tried to vote in the last hour the stations were open.

 

Agree Totally.....Well Said

[custardcream 10]

no problems at all at my polling station in s5

[mtbiker 10]

No, it's much more important that Tesco so if Tesco can manage to do it then the government damn well should do.

 

My husband gets up at five every morning and works a 12 shift getting home at around 8pm. In his normal working day he only has a two hour window to vote. We went down to vote at around 8pm, we queued for around 40 mins to vote but considered going home and coming back later as we thought it might be quieter - if we had done that then we wouldn't have been able to vote, we would have been turned away.

 

Voting is a right, not a privilege. If you turn up at the voting station within the alloted hours you should be able to vote. People who say 'you should have turned up earlier' are totally moronic. How can you judge that every single person who was turned away was just there late because they couldn't be bothered to go earlier.

 

QUOTE]

 

I appreciate your husband was a bit stuck but what about you? how many hours do you work? Could you have gone earlier? etc. If you could have gone earlier then you being there when there was a queue has potentially denied someone in your husbands boat the right to vote. How would/do you feel about that?

 

I think the point people are making that one should have or could have gone earlier is relevent. It's like everyone turning up at a supermarket at the same time or people heading out on the roads on a bank holiday. If you could have gone earlier and avoided the 'peak voting hours' then you don't really have much sympathy from me. If it was unavoidable and it was the only time you had to vote it is indeed unfortunate. I appreciate that maybe it have been strange that there were queues. But is it unheard of? I don't know, it is from my experience but then i've only voted a 3 times before.

[happyhippy 11]

Have you wondered what budget and criteria was given by central government to the local authorities to host the election?

 

There might be more to this than meets the eye.

 

Probably not a huge amount, if anything really if the truth be told. I'd reckon that some lower manager in the Local Authority on about £25k will have been given an extra responsibility for the temporary responsibility, and some overtime.

 

It almost certainly won't have been a huge amount, and not the responsibility of someone 'important'.

[Ouchcat 10]

 

I appreciate your husband was a bit stuck but what about you? how many hours do you work? Could you have gone earlier? etc. If you could have gone earlier then you being there when there was a queue has potentially denied someone in your husbands boat the right to vote. How would/do you feel about that?

 

I think the point people are making that one should have or could have gone earlier is relevent. It's like everyone turning up at a supermarket at the same time or people heading out on the roads on a bank holiday. If you could have gone earlier and avoided the 'peak voting hours' then you don't really have much sympathy from me. If it was unavoidable and it was the only time you had to vote it is indeed unfortunate. I appreciate that maybe it have been strange that there were queues. But is it unheard of? I don't know, it is from my experience but then i've only voted a 3 times before.

 

I work 9-5, I could have gone earlier but I waited till he went because I wanted to walk out and stretch my legs with him and have a chat on the way down. Are you seriously saying that even though I turned up two hours before the polling station shut it is unreasonable of me to expect to be allowed to vote?

 

It's also totally unreasonable for you to say that by going at 8pm I was denying someone else the right to vote. This has NEVER happened before - there was no reason for me to think that people would be turned away if I didn't vote early. Queues have happened occasionally but people being turned away has NEVER happened before.

 

If I had any idea something like that might happen of course I would have gone early but I had no reason to think that. I've voted four times, one of those times was the 1997 election where the turnout was phenomenal but nobody was turned away then.

 

If I turned up at a supermarket at peak times or got stuck in a traffic jam on a bank holiday I would have no right to moan because everyone knows they're inconvenient times when you'll get stuck or have to wait. But there was absolutely no reason to think that the same logic would apply to this election - what happened was totally unprecedented.

 

And, as I said before, voting is a right, not a privilege. People have suffered and died for the right for us to put a cross in that little box and that right should not be taken away by bad organisation and a lack of coherent planning.

[Ouchcat 10]

 

It almost certainly won't have been a huge amount, and not the responsibility of someone 'important'.

 

Well it should have been the responsibility of someone 'important'. Voting is one of the fundamental bedrocks of our society, it is bloody important and should be treated as such.

[happyhippy 11]

Regardless, no matter what kind of funding is given it really does not cost any money to station someone at the end of the line at 10pm to turn people away because the queue is closed.

 

That's what they should have done - turned away people who arrived after 10pm, not people who were queing before 10pm.

 

Why, when 10pm was the time when the polling booths shut? Would you expect your local pub to bring pints out to you at 10.30 because you couldn't get in, and might not before last orders?

[maggi 10]

I may have missed it, but has anyone mentioned anything about whether or not the polling stations affected by queues, and turning away voters, were in wards where it would have made any difference to the results?

 

I was just about to start researching this, but the answer is...

 

And why would that matter?

[happyhippy 11]

Well it should have been the responsibility of someone 'important'. Voting is one of the fundamental bedrocks of our society, it is bloody important and should be treated as such.

 

It is. That's why the polling stations are open for 18 full hours on a voting day. Twice as long and a bit than the regular working day.

[happyhippy 11]

I was just about to start researching this, but the answer is...

 

And why would that matter?

 

Well there are marginals where a few hundred votes could have made a difference, not to mention the more volatile matters in the local elections.

[happyhippy 11]

I work 9-5, I could have gone earlier but I waited till he went because I wanted to walk out and stretch my legs with him and have a chat on the way down. Are you seriously saying that even though I turned up two hours before the polling station shut it is unreasonable of me to expect to be allowed to vote?

 

It's also totally unreasonable for you to say that by going at 8pm I was denying someone else the right to vote. This has NEVER happened before - there was no reason for me to think that people would be turned away if I didn't vote early. Queues have happened occasionally but people being turned away has NEVER happened before.

 

If I had any idea something like that might happen of course I would have gone early but I had no reason to think that. I've voted four times, one of those times was the 1997 election where the turnout was phenomenal but nobody was turned away then.

 

If I turned up at a supermarket at peak times or got stuck in a traffic jam on a bank holiday I would have no right to moan because everyone knows they're inconvenient times when you'll get stuck or have to wait. But there was absolutely no reason to think that the same logic would apply to this election - what happened was totally unprecedented.

 

And, as I said before, voting is a right, not a privilege. People have suffered and died for the right for us to put a cross in that little box and that right should not be taken away by bad organisation and a lack of coherent planning.

 

I agree with you but for one thing. The times when you can vote are defined by law. If you're late, then tough.