Uk Referendum on The EU Announced for 23rd June.

[Simon_Jester]

As for a potential GE: Corbyn has declared himself ready to rock and roll, and in Private Eye there were suggestions that the Tories have been building up a sizeable war chest. Please only be a six week jobby. .... 3 months of this has been agonising!

[Sobs, audible clearly from across the pond]

I know... I feel your pain, friend... I so, so much feel your pain...

[Eternal_Freedom]

Yeah we also tend to have a lot of polling places, even if they small ones. My town for instance is essentially an oversized village tacked on to the south of a larger town. We have a lot of students here but that's it. There are no less than four polling stations in operation here, and that's just the ones I've used while living here, given the pattern there are almost certainly more.

[Purple]

Sounds to me like it's deliberately set up to be complicated.

[Crazedwraith]

Why? You get a voting card that tells you exactly where to go and when it's open.

[Purple]

Because there is more to it than your experience as a voter. Imagine being in charge of organizing all those sites, hiring all the workers, making sure everything is in place and ready and everyone gets those little cards shipped to them AND properly marked.

[Dartzap]

Because there is more to it than your experience as a voter. Imagine being in charge of organizing all those sites, hiring all the workers, making sure everything is in place and ready and everyone gets those little cards shipped to them AND properly marked.

Uh, it's worked fairly well for a fair while, with no real issues. There are people specifically employed by local authorities and the Electoral Commission to manage the process.

I am intrigued by how the numbers are being sent to the regional counting centres and to Manchester though - will they physical be sent to the regional hubs, and to Mancland, or is it digitised? Given the road conditions in the South East today, it could be tricky.

[Dartzap]

As for a potential GE: Corbyn has declared himself ready to rock and roll, and in Private Eye there were suggestions that the Tories have been building up a sizeable war chest. Please only be a six week jobby. .... 3 months of this has been agonising!

[Sobs, audible clearly from across the pond]

I know... I feel your pain, friend... I so, so much feel your pain...

Just think, if we did have another one, that in the space of a year, we will have had: two general elections, hundreds of council elections, local referendums, a national referendum, and Welsh and Scottish government elections. And you buggers still won't have elected your next president

[Eternal_Freedom]

As for a potential GE: Corbyn has declared himself ready to rock and roll, and in Private Eye there were suggestions that the Tories have been building up a sizeable war chest. Please only be a six week jobby. .... 3 months of this has been agonising!

[Sobs, audible clearly from across the pond]

I know... I feel your pain, friend... I so, so much feel your pain...

Just think, if we did have another one, that in the space of a year, we will have had: two general elections, hundreds of council elections, local referendums, a national referendum, and Welsh and Scottish government elections. And you buggers still won't have elected your next president

It's amazing what we can do if we put our minds to it.

[Purple]

I still can't believe you guys aren't doing preliminary pools, pre-result result counting or anything. Like BBC does not even have a countdown on... It's like you deliberately set out not to make this a tense spectacle.

[Hillary]

Also likely a general election coming up either way. Either Cameron's lost and Eurosceptic take charge. Or he's won and the campaign has been so hostile that the eurosceptics can block anything they want for bitterness.

Just think... another election cycle.

For a general election, there would need to be a vote of no confidence for which some Tories would have to vote for or abstain. Why would they do that and risk a Labour Government and/or losing their seat?

I don't see it at all. A few cabinet members will resign and, if it's a Leave vote, Cameron may or may not resign. I think things will return to "normal" fairly quickly.

[Hillary]

I still can't believe you guys aren't doing preliminary pools, pre-result result counting or anything. Like BBC does not even have a countdown on... It's like you deliberately set out not to make this a tense spectacle.

There is essentially a news blackout on the state of the vote until the polls close. The news outlets are not allowed to comment on it.

[Dartzap]

I still can't believe you guys aren't doing preliminary pools, pre-result result counting or anything. Like BBC does not even have a countdown on... It's like you deliberately set out not to make this a tense spectacle.

There are strict media rules during an election period, even more so on the day itself. In order to avoid influencing people, programmes are not allowed to comment until the ballot closes for the night.

Here are some of the nonos Tom Scott Youtube

[Simon_Jester]

That is a very good idea, this media blackout.

In the US we sometimes get depressed turnout in the western parts of the country when the polls close in the eastern parts hours in advance, and the news starts reporting and calling states for one side or the other.

Because there is more to it than your experience as a voter. Imagine being in charge of organizing all those sites, hiring all the workers, making sure everything is in place and ready and everyone gets those little cards shipped to them AND properly marked.

Yes, but much of this process can be automated, or is done exactly the same way every time.

And how would you go about "simplifying" the process, anyway? Just having fewer sites for voters to go wouldn't help, because you'd just need twice as many people at each site to compensate for having twice as many voters show up. And things like making sure there is adequate parking space and access to public transportation would get worse, not better.

If you rely on people mailing in ballots, that's simple but it takes a lot of time for the ballots to be physically delivered to the right place. This isn't normally a problem, but can create a problem if it is desirable to know the outcome of the election quickly.

If you use some kind of electronic voting system, you have a great many security issues to resolve, and you still have a lot of IT work to do to make things go well.

[Bedlam]

Elections are almost always on a Thursday. No idea why.

I remember something about them wanting to be near the weekend but not on a Friday because the common man would be drinking his hard earnt wages away then rather than voting.

[Purple]

All I know is that when the americans had their primaries I had a cool show to watch on TV to regal me. It had countdowns, live cometary, preliminary pools on the minute and everything. It was a show. This thing is completely and utterly boring.

A complete wasted opportunity if you ask me.

[Crazedwraith]

Oddly enough our arrangements for deciding our country's future aren't designed with your enjoyment in mind. You little shit.

[Purple]

But how are people supposed to know how the situation is going and if they should vote or not, rush to the votes or confidently stay home etc? For all you know there could be people right now throwing their time away voting for a cause already lost or already won.

[Dartzap]

It certainly wasn't designed with our enjoyment in mind, either.

Democracy isn't meant to be fun, it's meant to be a schizophrenic exercise in choice. It's all about the voices offering differing forms of self harm. At the end of it, you'll still be spending time in the padded cell. Hooray for informed choices!

[Crazedwraith]

But how are people supposed to know how the situation is going and if they should vote or not, rush to the votes or confidently stay home etc? For all you know there could be people right now throwing their time away voting for a cause already lost or already won.

The answer to should you vote is always 'Yes'.

[Dartzap]

But how are people supposed to know how the situation is going and if they should vote or not, rush to the votes or confidently stay home etc? For all you know there could be people right now throwing their time away voting for a cause already lost or already won.

That's thepoint . By minimising the media pressure, it forces people to make their own decisions, with whatever bias driving that view.

[Kinyo]

For those interested I can give a rough insight into the electoral process in the UK.

Full disclosure this was during the Local Elections/AV Referendum and was specific to Rochdale MBC but I can't imagine things being too different now and in other places.

As soon as the election/referendum is called or about a month before purdah (Whichever gives the longer period) an e-mail is sent by the Elections Department (Actually a part of Rochdale MBC and not the Electoral Commission) round to all staff in the Council asking for election volunteers. Usually 1 Presiding Officer and 2-4 Election Clerks depending on the size of the polling station. After the internal mail shot the jobs are posted online and in the local paper.

The elections department then gets all of the relevant materials ready for each polling station and getting training arranged for the people taking the various positions.

Purdah kicks in and all policy announcements outside of day to day reports are ceased. Staff are informed Purdah is in effect and any questions of a political nature are answered with something along the lines of "I am afraid I cannot comment at this time"

A day or two before election day all the elections material is arranged into boxes and the actual ballot boxes are sealed with numbered tags. Any returned without the right tag are rejected as tainted ballots and the Presiding Officer then has some very difficult questions to answer.

Polling stations open at 7am and close at 10pm at which point the ballot boxes head to the central count location.

Ballot boxes pass into one door where they are signed off by an Elections Department officer and they are carried through to the count area. The seal is broken by a designated person and the ballots are emptied and counted. Totals are added up and handed to the second most senior Officer of the night to be totalled all together with the final result handed to the senior officer of the night who, in a local election, then calls out the results by the Ward as they are totalled.

For the AV referendum the ballots where totalled and signed off be the chief officer who then calls Manchester with the total count where it is added to the regional count.

For the local election results we had the ballots counted and called by 2-3am. About 5 hours after the close of polls.

[Dartzap]

Much appreciated, Kinyo.

Does that help, Purple? :p

[Vendetta]

For a general election, there would need to be a vote of no confidence for which some Tories would have to vote for or abstain. Why would they do that and risk a Labour Government and/or losing their seat?

Unless the referendum is crushingly in favour of Remain, there are plenty of Tories who would sign on for a no confidence vote.

There are several who would probably bite Cameron's throat out right there at the dispatch box.

[Dartzap]

And so begin Jeremy Vines fever dreams.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

What I found hilarious is that the closing statements by the leave side tried ripping off a certain franchise by making like leaving would be Britain's Independence Day. If they were trying to sound awesome, then they failed miserably!