Seems many people haven’t been able to vote today for a number of reasons. Some are unfortunate but understandable, whilst others are more worrying – including some places running out of ballot papers!
It sounds as though part of this is down to turnout exceeding expectation – a good thing! But not so good if the infrastructure of the election can’t accommodate it. To their credit, the Electoral Commission have already promised a full investigation.
So what should they do differently next time around?
For a start, getting the administrative details wrong is unforgivable. Nobody should be turned away because paper lists of registered voters have not been updated, or find that there are not enough ballot papers.
I also think there’s going to have to be some review of opening hours for polling stations. It will be hard to organise, but maybe opening for 24 hours, from say 0600 one morning, would make more sense? There’ll also the perennial option of weekend voting…
One thing I’ve not seen much mention of is communication to voters. Here in Newbury, there’s not been all that much information sent out from the electoral officials or the council – were I not a politics junkie, I could easily have missed it! People need better and clearer advice on both registering to vote, and practical tips for the day – such as arriving in plenty of time.
With my geek hat on I’m curious how new technologies could help us out with this. Obviously authentication is a huge issue, but wouldn’t it be nice if we could have some sort of online voting? Or at least use some more social technologies to communicate with the electorate!
Whatever happens – I think there’ll be huge demand for this to change next time around.