A day in the life of a Middle Manager...

Postal Voting

This year the government is running an experiment that concerns 14 million voters in the UK. They have decided to hold all-postal voting in four areas -- namely the North West, North East, East Midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber.

This year anyone living in any of those areas (all in the north of the country BTW) has no choice but to send in their vote by post. There will be no polling stations open so you can just wander in and spend 2 minutes casting your vote...

The government has been open criticised very hard for choosing to do this, especially in the way they've handled it. There have been huge problems in getting the postal voting packs to people on time. They were ALL meant to have been delivered by 2 June... Unfortunately at least one council had to reprint 220,000 voting papers because the wrong details were printed on them. Even worse they sent them out! Here are their instructions for what to do if you received an incorrect ballot

If you have not received the first ballot pack, use the new ballot pack only. The replacement ballot pack will be clearly marked.

If you have already returned your first ballot paper, fill in the new one and return that as well.

If you have not yet filled in the first ballot paper, please use the new ballot paper for your vote, but also return the old ballot pack to the Town Hall.

When elections staff receive returned ballot papers, incorrect or duplicate votes can be identified immediately. Our system will not permit a duplicate vote if a second set is received from the same person.

Do what? Jeez...

In the North West the situation is made even worse by the fact that the electoral commission have changed some of the boundaries... For an example, take the town I currently live in -- Warrington. The boundaries have changed enough here for there to be three less seats to contest!

The fact of the matter is that the government ignored advice from the Electoral Reform Society and the House of Lords to not have such extensive postal voting... However, it's here and we have to deal with it now.

There are two elections, one for local and one for European government. I must admit I'm kinda used to just putting a cross in one box to vote for whoever I choose so when I got the (frankly bloody massive) voting papers for this election I was pretty shocked to find that I could vote for THREE people in the local election this time. Whaaaaat? How did that happen? Anyone care to have a stab at explaining that one?

Anyway, it seems straightforward enough. There are two envelopes (A and B). You fill in your confirmation of identity (after having it witnessed by Donald Duck of course) and pop it into Envelope A with the barcode facing out so it can be scanned through the window. You then tussle with your two sheets of A3 paper with lots of names of people you've never heard of and put crosses against someone's name (or in the case of the euro elections against about 20 people's names because the north west votes AS A WHOLE on that issue -- you no longer have a local MEP, another change). Put said voting papers into envelope B and seal it. Put envelope B inside envelope A then seal envelope A. Pop it into your local postbox and hope that Royal Mail manage to actually deliver it on time seeing as their record isn't too good right now.

Seems pretty involved to me. Yet the government is apparently hoping that voting in this way will increase turnout... Yeah right.

Lets be honest, polling stations are open from 7am til 10pm on voting day normally. If you can't be bothered to go over to your local one (for us, the local school is used and it is literally a 5 minute walk away) during the FIFTEEN HOURS its open then it seems to me you're not going to bother with something which seems to increase the effort involved.

It is a sad fact that more people in this country now vote on TV reality programs than vote in elections.

Something has gone badly wrong in our democratic process...