With just one seat in the UK's parliamentary election still to declare let me try to summarise where we are:
- In this election more people voted Lib-Dem than last time, but the party ended up with fewer seats -- already far fewer than they should have had for the numbers who voted for them.
- Gordon Brown's party came second, losing more seats in a swing against a government than at any time since the 1930s, but he remains Prime Minister. And will remain so until he chooses to resign, and there's not a damn thing anyone else can do because, apparently, he has Squatter's Rights.
- And David Cameron scored total votes in the mid-30%s, less than Labour and the Lib-Dems combined (who had 52% the last time I checked), but he now has the moral right to govern.
Meanwhile, hundreds and hundreds of people turning up at several Polling Stations well before the advertised closing time were refused the right to vote because some local Returning Officers hadn't employed enough staff to handle the number of voters or, incredibly, hadn't printed enough ballot papers.The police (those state agents well-known for fearlessly protecting the rights of the citizen) were called to some stations to make the disenfranchised disappear (or, at least, go away).
An electoral law expert at the University of Essex has said: "It is beyond doubt that if a larger number of people than the margin were prevented from voting and this could be shown to be the fault of the election officials that any petition [to the courts] would succeed".
Returning Officers, usually the chief executives of the local authorities, are paid thousands of pounds in extra fees especially to carry out their duties. What are the chances of those Returning Officers responsible for disenfranchising voters willingly forgoing their slush payments?
It would be laughable if we weren't in the middle of yet another global financial meltdown.
And here's the tally from this election on the mean number of votes that it took to elect an MP of each party:
- Labour - 33,338
- Conservative - 35,021
- Lib-Dem - 119,397
5 comments:
Is it just me that really, really fancied the first bloke in that Youtube clip? He was devastatingly lovely. And his inarticulate rage was very sexy. Oh, yes.
Yes, he was indeed very sexy and I would love for him to go to bat for me anytime!
And I thought that elections in the USA were screwed up, what with our electoral college, Supreme Court electing Bush over Gore, etc. I don't begin to understand the UK system. Everybody in the US says we need more than 2 parties, but your 3 party system seems to just throw confusion into the equation. I still don't get how your Prime Minister gets into power and then can refuse to relinquish power.
Your polling problems sound horrendous and ours are often not any better, but early one-stop voting has helped here. What I don't understand is WHY CAN'T WE VOTE ON THE INTERNET? We do commerce, banking, etc. securely, so why can't we vote that way. Would be more trustworthy than using Diebold voting machines!
Your electoral system is inherently unfair, thankfully we ditched first past the post in NZ in 1994 and moved to an MMP electoral system, it is much fairer and the sky did not fall on our head. I'm not hopeful of a similar change in the UK, interests are too entrenched and powerful. I think the small population in NZ and our openness to change enabled the move to MMP. In our case small is good. I strongly recommend an MMP electoral system.
Stephen
Auckland
New Zealand
The young guy in the YouTube clip is seriously cute, smart and articulate.
Well if it makes you feel any better here in the U.S. there pushing for a law to remove Americans citizenship, harkening back to the days of Jim Crow when blacks were denied citizenship, if they are suspected (not proven) of associating with terrorists. All this so they can be imprisoned indefinitely without trial and our "innocent until proven guilty (unless your black)" legal system can be circumvented. We should have a debate over which of our countries is more facist, we'll have a grand time discussing it.
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