I understand where people are coming from in respect that if you've been waiting over an hour to vote but couldn't, you have a right to be a little pissed off. However, let this be a lesson to you, get the fuck up early and make sure you vote in time. I went at 7:04am, just to be on the safe side.
The law is that if you haven't got a ballot before 10 pm you lost the chance to vote. People had 15 hours to cast their vote, even people who work should have had ample time to vote well before 10pm.Originally Posted by GGT
I think it's going to be hard to form a government in the UK, Lib-Lab clearly are the losers, but the Tories also don't come off as the representatives of the entire nation with a natural right to rule.
Congratulations America
The complacent, self-obsessed brats of the technocrat capitalist West have such a sense of false entitlement that they'd whine about anything, this is just another example. I'm sure some are crying that they can't vote by SMS.
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
To be honest, you have to wonder why the hysteria of a few people is keeping us from voting electronically.
Congratulations America
Well yeah, but preferably by something a little safer than an SMS, still
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Voting by SMS doesn't seem so bad if you set up the system well. When I do online banking with HSBC Turkey I log in on their website by entering a username, a password I made myself after which I then have to wait for an sms with a 6-digit code to actually access my account.Well yeah, but preferably by something a little safer than an SMS, still
I could imagine a system in which voter registration includes people's mobile phone number so that people who want to do it that way go online to a voting site and vote in a way similar to what HSBC has.
Congratulations America
What the fuck happened to the lib dems?
Everyones been talking about them before the election - a huge surge in polls and ratings before the election, Clegg is the new golden boy, and at present with 609 seats out of 650 declared, the lib dems are down 6 seats.
I think a lot of people lost faith in the last moment and went for the old ways of voting. The good thing about this outcome though is that electoral reform jumped closer.What the fuck happened to the lib dems?
Everyones been talking about them before the election - a huge surge in polls and ratings before the election, Clegg is the new golden boy, and at present with 609 seats out of 650 declared, the lib dems are down 6 seats.
Congratulations America
Ok, it's a done deal, the UK has a hung parliament. Even if the Tories would win all undeclared seats they'd still be one seat short of an absolute majority. I think that the phone in Nick Cleggs room will start ringing any moment now.
Congratulations America
Am shocked to see bureaucratic incompetence leading to thousands being disenfranchised has people here blaming the voters. This isn't a partisan issue, people should be able to vote. There was nothing on my polling card that says that if you're in the queue at 8:30 you may get the door slammed on your face. Nor has this happened before in my living memory. Last night I was in a major sports cafe in London with loads of bloggers, journalists, party reps, candidates from all parties and just generally interested people and nobody could think of any example like this.
Some people have different issues in their life and if the polling time is until 10 they shouldn't expect 8:30 to be too late. In America they stop queue's at the time the poll closes but let those already in queues vote, that's standard in most nations I know.
The queues are not supposed to normally happen either, or expected. Certain polling stations were understaffed causing these problems - that is not the voters fault. One polling station even ran out of ballot papers and had to stop the ballot while they got more printed FFS and ultimately hundreds lost out on voting.That is not the voters fault.
It is failing to organise a piss-up in a brewery. The result of the election shouldn't be decided by bureaucratic incompetence.
I got round to voting about 7 last night because I couldn't have gotten there any sooner, and was able to wander down to an empty polling station and poke my head round the door. Had I been in one of the areas where there were problems, I might well have had problems.
Of course, there were clearly some voters at fault last night, the students who apparently turned up without ballot cards, or those who seemed to have turned up at 8, seen queues and gone away again only to come back at nine and find the queue still there. But overall, a fuckup by the electoral services. There was one polling station was closed at nine because they didn't have enough staff to meet the demand. Useless cunts.
On the plus side, they'll probably have another chance to get it right in about 6 to 12 months.
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
Indeed, the chances are its not affected the result, but its a completely unnecessary fuckup.
I'm amazed that Brown is trying to cling on in Downing St, 'vote yellow get Brown' could come true. I hope not. But what its bringing into line even more is the West Lothian Question, already last election England had more votes (but less seats) for the Tories. This time England-only the result is a landslide. 11.5% lead in the popular vote, close to 3 million extra votes so far, with a massive majority on English seats.
Scotland which has an SNP government for its own laws, has returned 41 Labour MPs and just one Tory one for determining English laws. Once again I hope for English independenceCode:England seats at a glance Political Party Seats Change Conservative 292 +89 Labour 188 -84 Liberal Democrat 41 -4 Green 1 +1, but at the least we need to not just be discussing the electoral system but also English Votes for English Laws (EVEL).
Aww, look at the little Green one, isn't it cute
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
first evah
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
Yeah well, you English chose to rule the Scots from your parliament, so you've got no-one to blame but yourselves.
As for Brown hanging on to power, I wonder why he shouldn't? It's not like one 'minority' government intrinsically has a bigger right to rule tan the other. The tories got 35% or so of the national vote, which means it didn't get the other 65% or even the 15% that would underpin the legitimacy of a claim to power while not having a majority in Parliament.
Congratulations America
Wasn't expecting that.
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
Well, I see the conservatives having fewer votes than a Labour - Liberal combination. Can't really fathom where the national parties and greens stand, but I would imagine that a significant number of their members can be won over to a left of center coalition that delivers on electoral reform. The only party that doesn't want electoral reform are the Conservatives.
Only if Clegg is really bonkers he'll be satisfied with a promise of a 'committee on electoral reform'.
Congratulations America
The current electoral system benefits Labour the most. They only reason they're making sounds about electoral reform now is because it might help them stay in power this election. They're not very good at long-term thinking.
Hope is the denial of reality
It only benefits Labour most right now because of the current layout of the constituencies. It has benefited the Tories in the past, I believe.
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
AFAIK it has for decades favoured Labour, probably always will (Scotland, lower Labour turnout etc)
Wrong, the Scots have their own Parliament and are ruled from Holyrood. Labour MSPs voted to give Scottish student free university education (no fees), Scottish Labour MPs enforced on England higher top-up fees. There is no democratic mandate to have Scottish MPs making English laws on devolved issues, there is no recipocrisy.
Con 39.6%
Lab 28.1%
In England.
I've just gone over every election since 1900. The 1951 election was the last time the Tories benefited in any way from the electoral system. If you exclude the 1951 election, the Tories hadn't benefited from this system in at least the entire 20th century.
Hope is the denial of reality
Well, it wouldn't be like that if you hadn't started off with incorporating them and then giving them autonomy again.
Should I really care if Labour's main reason to scrap the unrepresentative system is that they want to stay in power?
Congratulations America
Unless they're incredibly short-sighted, they won't do it. They'd probably make some vague promises and then find a way out of them. Regardless, the most likely scenario is a short-lived Tory government that gets some backing by the Lib Dems.
Hope is the denial of reality
Labour promised immediate legislation on electoral reform.
I personally think electoral reform could be done easily by replacing fptp with a run off between the two highest scorers of a first round that didn't give any candidate a real majority. That way you can roughly keep the tradition of constituencies with a representative the Brits have right now but without governments that govern on the basis of a minority vote.
Congratulations America
They did that before. Never came through.
Hope is the denial of reality
This time it's their only chance of staying in power. If they don't deliver they'll be facing new elections and a Conservative landslide.
Congratulations America
Or they can promise a referendum at some point in the future, by which point people will forget about this election and support the status quo.
Hope is the denial of reality
Now that's just begging for a lawsuit.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
Labour was supposed to have implemented voting reform back in '97. Anyone who believes they'll do it now is asking for trouble, Brown is a selfish manipulative toad who will do what he sees first in his, then in his parties interest. The second he could betray them he would.
You're idea of single-member transferable votes in constituencies is Australia's "AV" system. Labour wants that because (surprise, surprise) its estimated to increase the number of seats Labour would get at elections. AV is not proportional, it eliminates the "wasted vote" argument, but its anything but proportional. Australia's lower house is less proportional than ours.
Best compromise I could see coming in a Tory-LD compromise, which I would support, is virtually the Aussie system. A non-proportional lower-house but change it so there are 10% less MPs and all constituencies the same size, with a fully-elected proportional STV based House of Lords. Remove all remaining hereditiaries and appointees.
Interesting how fluid things become under pressure. By the way; Cleggs courting of the Cameron is unavoidable in any coalition talks. It means that an attempt to form a government with Labour will have gained legitimacy if they can't make a deal with Cameron.
The way I understand it at the moment is that Lib-Lab would have 315 votes where (in effect) you need 321 rather than the 326 we hear about all the time. 5 mp's are most likely never going to show up ever in London.
Last edited by Hazir; 05-07-2010 at 06:15 PM.
Congratulations America
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