Phew

[mraltariel]

15 hours of happy telling from 7am until the polls closed at 10pm. Much higher turnout in our ward than usual, and a jolly time with activists of all political persuasions (many representatives of two flavours of socialists, an itinerant Green and the very occasional LibDem

Comments

[azalaisdep]

Shambles is not the word. Florida 2000 here we come, by all accounts - polls where would-be voters were turned away being open to legal challenge, according to Harperson, and given that the national result is knife-edge... My FiL has been canvassing with a local councillor friend in Chester, where allegedly the number of voters turned away is approaching the size of the MP's majority - he's going to be incandescent.

Good for you though! The election officials at our (very well-run) polling station were all very charming and efficient.

[mraltariel]

It's going to be interesting to see how this shakes out. Commiserations on your own constituency, although, if it is any kind of consolation, she does seem to have potential as a good constituency MP, party affiliation notwithstanding.

[azalaisdep]

I *had* a very good constituency MP, grumble (tho' thank you for your commiserations). I'm particularly hacked off by: the boundary changes, which shifted the whole constituency somewhat westwards and therefore Tory shire-wards, while conveniently handing a pile of urban centre-left votes to Oxford East; and some appalling distortion of EH's views by both local Tories and conservative Catholic and other church groups (the victor herself is apparently a pretty fundamentalist Christian) painting Harris's pro-choice, pro-assisted-dying, pro-scientific-research views as making him a euthanasianist bunny-torturer and describing him, in terms, as "Dr Death". One of my ultra-liberal Catholic friends is absolutely incandescent over some of the crowing she's seen in more conservative-Catholic corners of FB today.

[communicator]

You sat there all day? Good for you, but it must have been exhausting.

[mraltariel]

I was quite tired by the end. Whenever an opportunity for a relief shift came, I sent them over to the other polling station in the ward instead so that we had both covered for the whole day; so it was mostly my own fault.

On the other hand there's a cafe in our community centre and we had a very agreeable Con/Lab pact ensuring the tea supply.

[azalaisdep]

Hurrah for tea coalitions! (maybe that Mumsnet question about the leaders' favourite biscuits was more pertinent than we thought?)

[mraltariel]

Turnout in our ward is notoriously bad, even at the GE (~25%) so I was very pleased with the numbers. I had about 1350 in my polling station, and similar numbers at the other one, so that's up above 50%, which (although low by national standards) is a big step forward.

[mraltariel]

BTW - It took me a moment (I know, I know, I'm in the slow readers' group). But I love your icon.

[trixieleitz]

...a total shambles...

And to think that I was worried about low turnout :/

[mraltariel]

Turnout was low. This shambles, whatever excuses are being made, had nothing to do with "overwhelming numbers of people looking to vote."

It also seems that some of these shambles are not quite as shambolic as they seemed last night. Still bad, though.

[trixieleitz]

Turnout was low.

Oh! Well, that makes it even worse :(

I was up and idly following coverage until about seven hours ago, it sounded that there was variously some following of the letter of the law, some bureaucratic cock-ups, and some voters making unfortunate but understandable queuing decisions. We haven't heard the end of that.