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Politics

The whole General Election 2010 shambles

People being stopped from voting because it was once decreed that a vote could not take place after 10pm? What is that all about? Polling stations not having enough ballot papers despite knowing precisely how many polling cards were sent out in their constituencies. Paper lists that hadn’t been updated?

Something tells me we’re doing something wrong. Something also tells me we should scrap the results from this election and have another vote next week, allowing all those people who couldn’t vote the chance to have their say. After all, how democratic is it to disallow a large segment of the voting public from their right to vote?

Regarding doing something wrong: in this digital age, where we have all kinds of technology available to confirm the identity of an individual, and the Internet being prevalent everywhere we go, why are we still using paper ballots? Why are we not using a computerised system that can give us the vote as soon as everyone has voted?

You have a staff problem – not enough of them and they don’t really want to be there. You have a logistics problem – what happens if you get a deluge of people flooding in as happened last night. What if they all decide to do it after work? It happened 30 years ago, and our servants (yes, that’s what you are – nothing but, and damned well remember it!) have become complacent with the low voting turnouts that Labour seems to have encouraged since.

Frankly, I’m a bit fed up of all of this. Quite apart from the fact that the voting system is entirely rigged to a two party system, and the Tories and Labour are entirely happy with this arrangement, it feels like we’re just on a downward spiral. Do politicians really care about what we’re asking for – do they even listen when we speak? Or do they, as I believe, just have their own agenda to satisfy (Gordon Brown and “being Prime Minister” anyone?) and more fool anyone who gets in their way.

At some time, we as the general public have to take stock of the situation, and then act on it. If we don’t do something now, we’ll end up with a complete mess of a government for the next [pick a number between 1 and 100] terms. The people who are there to serve our best interests have done nothing but serve their own for far too long and it’s time for it to stop. Who’s with me?

Update: I’ve been thinking a bit more about how we could make some change happen. Rather than just call another election, which could turn out to be a bit pointless, we need to reform the voting process to use proportional representation and then call another election later this year based on this.

By Tomislav Simnett

Tom runs Initforthe, a software development consultancy in Manchester, UK. He's been programming for over 30 years. In his spare time, he enjoys motorbikes, skiing, cycling. He has a wife and two children, and he spends as much time not working with them, and trying to see life through the eyes of an eternally curious child.

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