The UK General Election

[Dak]

its split up amongst legislature and tradition.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kingdom

 

buggered if i know what's actually in our constitution, tho... but right now on the telly they're talking about Labour having a constitutional right, as the incumbent party, to have the first bash at trying to form a coalition. Dunno if it's written down somewhere or wether that's just how the house of commons works, but apparently that's part of the constitution.

[insane_alien]

its been horrible.

 

personally, i think that there's going to be a lot of contested votes as people were turned back from polling booths(in some because they ran out of ballot papers). particularly in swing seats(seats that could go either way). we could let this turn into our florida, or, in the seats where this happened we could have a rerun and do it right.

 

also, something about it just feels wrong. i mean, when channel 4 provides the least biased coverage then you know somethings up. after the ballots closed a number of news sources just assumed the tories had won(to the point of telling a labour MP that 'but you haven't won' when a grand total of zero results were in. and asking a tory how it felt to have won the election).

 

somethings stinks about this election, and its worse than my feet.

[Severian]

Its an absolute disaster, in my opinion. I was hoping for a labour-Liberal coalition which would, when combined, hold a majority. But we don't even have that. It looks like the only way we can have a coalition with a majority would be for the Liberals to join the Conservatives, and I am not convinced that would work.

 

I am very disappointed by the Liberal Democrat's result. Once again, our electorate have chickened out of going for real change. They say one thing in public, but when they get into the booth, their tiny minds get scared and they vote the same way they always have, for the two big parties. I suppose that is the problem with democracy - stupid people get a say in the running of the country.

 

I am also horrified by the voting irregularities. It is outrageous that people who got to the polling station before it closed were not able to vote because of the huge queues. But even worse is the stories that students who wanted to vote were segregated into a different line, and the 'normal' residents were given preferential treatment. That is downright election fraud, since it removes (or at least dilutes) the votes of a particular demographic. I hope we will see the official who ordered that publicly prosecuted and sent to jail.

 

On a personal note, I am in a seat which had a small Labour majority in the last election with the Liberals second, and I was really really hoping that the Liberals would win. They didn't, so we are saddled with the same Labour MP who has been completely invisible to the consistency for the last 5 years. The Liberal candidate was local, visible and had already been working to make things better in our area. But the electorate vote, once again, for their traditional party.

 

I maintain my tradition of never having voted for a party which subsequently formed the government, and (I think) never having voted for a candidate who won their seat. I do feel rather deflated and disenfranchised. Really, what is the point of voting in this sham of a democracy?

 

It is also very sad that Evan Harris, who was one of the few friends of science in parliament, has lost his seat

Edited May 7, 2010 by Severian

[Royston]

Just to echo IA and Severian, but what a complete mess of an election.

 

I naively thought, that 'this time', we had a three party system, obviously not. I promised myself I would leave the country if the Tories won the most seats, so possibly looking forward to booking my visa once my degree is finished i.e if I can finish it, funding has already stifled my Uni, (which I won't get into right now) but funding for science under a conservative government, is enough to bunk the country on it's own.

 

If there's anything to perpetuate the political apathy in the UK, it's a shoddy election.

[tomgwyther]

It is outrageous that people who got to the polling station before it closed were not able to vote because of the huge queues

 

The election IMO should be declared void as British citizens were expressly and openly denied the right to vote, a contravention of the Human Rights Act 1998. protocol 1, article 3, the equal franchise act 1928, and various UNDHR articles, not to mention international law to which were are supposed to be subscribed.

I'm suprised at the apathy of some voters, in the past, stopping people from voting caused war, insurrection, revolution and the like;

No taxation without representation and all that.

One of the reasons we're in Iraq and Afghanistan is to secure voting rights for all, and we can't even do it ourself.

Luckily, my polling station suffered no such problems. had it done, you might well have seen me on the news holding a sit in, restraining the exit of the ballot boxes; threatening to torch the whole place if our demands for votes weren't met.

Edited May 7, 2010 by tomgwyther

[insane_alien]

my polling station ran fine as well but i am still pretty pissed that people were turned away. even more so that students were segrgated and treated as less important in some cases thus skewing the demographics.

 

The result in my area actually went sort of towards what i wanted anyway(not the party i wanted but second choice at anyrate). BUT i'd be happy to go for a complete re-election simply because this one was crap in its execution.

 

i mean really, how do you not set it up to be prepared to deal with the full constituency? they know exactly the maximum number of eligble voters so why not prepare for 100% turnout(even though it's never going to be 100%).

[jryan]

I think that the government just assumed that you love standing in queue.

[bascule]

I've been hearing a lot about what a mess this election was, and it seems everyone else here agrees. Sorry to hear that.