The Election

[dataDave]

How about changing the ballot forms to add questions? Next to the box for your cross/tick, you'd have a few questions about their policies and if you get them wrong, you clearly know nothing about the party you have voted for and thus the vote gets rejected on the grounds that you are clueless and shouldn't be allowed to vote.

I agree with this 100%.

I don't class myself as being educated enough to contribute a valid vote, I'm quite a dumb person - yet I still believe I'm more intelligent that 95% of all the other people I meet.

[ChrisF]

Go one step further and just have questions, instead of even mentioning the parties...

Kind of like that website, but less biased.

[fuse]

I agree in principle, but look at the issues we've had just trying to get a simple "put a cross in the box" ballot to work. In the brief 5 minutes I spent in my polling centre I saw 2 people trying to put the wrong bit of paper into the wrong box.

[spagmasterswift]

I was asked by somebody at work today who I put down as my second choice...I had no idea I had a second choice?

[dataDave]

I just spoke to a teacher from the school and she told me she voted for "Conservatory". I **** you not, a teacher ffs. That's almost as silly as me voting for Green Peace.

[charlesr]

Surely time for internet voting? If I can fill out my tax form and do my banking online, surely I can vote online too?

[Daragon]

I think you have to consider the pensioners who would probably face their eyes dropping out at the very sight of a powered on PC.

(Online voting is already possible anyway)

[dataDave]

I agree in principle, but look at the issues we've had just trying to get a simple "put a cross in the box" ballot to work. In the brief 5 minutes I spent in my polling centre I saw 2 people trying to put the wrong bit of paper into the wrong box.

Maybe you should have to fold up your vallot slip into a tetrahedron or some kind of shape and have special slots for each, like those pre-school toys.

[Spatial]

I think I like the idea of a Conservatory Party. As long as there's no wicker chairs - eurgh!

[Mayhem]

As a Lib Dem last night's result was very disappointing. I never thought we'd get more than 80 seats on an absolutely brilliant night, but to go down in seats and hardly anywhere in percentage terms is a bit of a blow after a great campaign.

Yeah, I was a bit surprised too... I guess when push came to shove, most people stood by their old ways and barely changed voting patterns... and if they did it was pretty much to Tory from Labour.

[Brad]

Cool, a 5000 lib dem majority in Cheltenham.

[Mayhem]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/election2010/results/ Map view is madness. Who decided on all those tiny seats up North? It's a sea of blue and yet no win. lol, the whole thing is lame.

Generally the boundaries are based upon population densities so that each seat has roughly the same number of voters within it... so the areas are going to be smaller in and around cities because there are more people present. And also tend to vote Labour...

[dataDave]

Pretty much everyone I've been in some form of contact with voted for the Lib Dems (apart from that numb-skull I just spoke to at lunch), including a staggeringly large amount of folk on Facebook. I don't know how they've done so ****. I also can't understand how the Conservatory party have done so well in areas that were well and truly shafted sideways by them back in the harsh times, I know policies change and that but still... if I jokingly suggested to the majority of older people around here that I was voting Conservative I'd probably get lynched, or at the very least bollocked - and less heads would turn at the mention of voting for the BNP.

It's a fix!! Perhaps all three parties should merge to form some kind of dictatorship, and shortly after remove their plastic man-suits to reveal their reptile skin, I swear Gordon brown isn't human, his face is all ****ed up and doesn't seemed to be stuck on right, he flinches a lot too.

[merf]

I'm no constitutional expert but how the hell did my area, Enfield, return a conservative MP but hand a conservative council over to labour, that seems odd.

proportional rep is all well and good but it leaves you with a permanent power share situation and the manifestoes that people voted for get watered down and never implemented (not that I spose they do anyway in current system)

[abigsmurf]

This is all a bit of a mess really.

The Lib Dems not coming out and giving any real indictation of which party they'd side with hurt them big time in the elections and to be honest, it was a stupid strategy ("We're a party that's all for change... but if you vote for us you may get brown again!"). Now we've got this drawn out uncertainty that's wholy undemocratic (voters pretty much have no say now in who leads the country). Whilst this continues, the pound is plummeting against the € and $.

I predict a new election in under a year with a <50&#37; turnout with the Lib Dems losing a huge number of seats (as every paper but the Guardian will put the blame for the mess on them) and the Tories getting a solid majority.

We need to overhaul our election system. First past the post is stupid and we as a nation treated a parlimentary election as if it was a presidential one.