In case you hadn’t noticed, in less than a decent night’s sleep, the polling booths will open across the UK. I’ve set my alarm 10 minutes earlier than otherwise so that I can cast my vote on the way to the station. In this rural parish, I guarantee I will be the first voter to cross the threshold. In the unlikely event of there being an exit poll, it will throw the pundits into a frenzy, as they extrapolate into a forecast of a kicking for the Chancellor. The two officials, if that is what they be, will resemble the Miss Tibbs, residential at Fawlty Towers, and will cluck and gurgle about their duty. They will comment, as they check my voting paper, that I am the young man (I’m 52) who lives round the back of so-and-so. I will not see them again until the next democratic opportunity. I go dancing at loads of village halls around the country, but this is the only occasion when I visit the one in my home village, tucked away in it’s 1960s prefabness, round the side of the parish church, which in turn is set out in the fields. I haven’t a clue what goes on there any other time. It’s a picture of bucolic England as much of a caricature as John Major’s cycling district nurses.
I am sure there are plenty of us on here for whom our first experience of elections was a day off school, as the nation commandeered our classrooms and assembly halls. These are the places that pop up on the telly as narrative, ideally contrasted with some out of the way institution on a remote Scottish island, to which people have to row in order to exercise their democratic right.
Where do you vote? Anyone got any quaint venues or tales to tell as they make use of this precious privilege, denied to so many round the world, fought for by our ancestors, yet squandered by a third of the electorate?
My thumb’s aloft.
Where I voted most recently, in St Austell, was in the stygian gloom of the Co-op loading bay, in the local council elections. I voted for the woman who promised to something about the seagulls dragging your trash all over the landscape. She won, but as far as I know the seagulls are still doing their thing. So I’m a bit jaundiced about the democratic process.
As of this moment, nowhere. I’m not allowed to vote in Australia, although I did get a letter from the Electoral Commission asking querulously why I hadn’t registered to vote. You’d think they’d know.
I made vague attempts to organise a UK postal vote but didn’t pull it off.
So I’ll be watching today’s shenanigans from afar with interest, feeling a bit disenfranchised. Whatever happens, IT’S NOT MY FAULT, NKAY?
Enjoyable description of the nitty gritty of the electoral process Cheshire.
Here in sensible Sweden they have elections on Sundays so no school kids have to miss a school day.
This is a new one for me. Instead of ambling along to our village hall, I’m stuck in sunny Palm Springs. Just texted my decision to my wife so she can cast my proxy vote. By tomorrow evening local time the results will have started flooding in, so I’ll be following it online.
And remember – those people who sit outside and ask for your polling number as you leave have no right to the information, however high-handedly they ask. If you want to give it fine, if you want to tell them where to go that’s fine too. They are not part of the voting process.
Anyway, there is a modern community centre next to the local primary school where the ballot boxes are set up. Elections are the only times I go in, and for the intervening years I have to content myself with occasional glimpses of line dancing or badminton or kids’ judo classes as I walk past. I usually vote on the way to work, but it will be in the way home this year because I have to make a detour to collect a parcel from the post office on that side of the road today. Gripping stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Those ‘tellers’ might be like me – strong-armed by my wife to sit outside the polling booth for an hour politely asking people for their number so the ‘party machine’ (ie a couple of confused people with spreadsheets) can see if there are people that need to be reminded to get out to vote.
I quite enjoyed it – all the other party tellers were very chatty and the voters in a good mood.
Nothing too sinister in that?
No problem with the ones who ask politely – I’ll decline to give my number just as politely. What I object to is the couple in the past who have all but demanded to have my polling number when they have no right to it. They have given the impression that they are as much part of the voting system as putting your cross in the box when that just isn’t the case. I hope you enjoy it if you’re on the doors of your local polling station again today, but I wish everyone in that position was as easy going about it as you seem to be.
Well, if they do do that then they are idiots. Not me today but Mrs Tunes will be poised with a cheery smile and a blunt HB pencil.
And in the end there weren’t any there! Peak hours too, it seems. Far busier than I’ve ever seen it early in the morning and I had to wait for a booth to come free.
I am off in a few minutes to vote in the hairdressers just behind Chesil Beach.
We have a primary school in the village, which opens its doors to the enfranchised hoi-polloi today. This is lib-dem country, with the tories a strong second, although I keep my fingers crossed for a revolutionary (and unlikely) massive turn out from the Hillage Greens, as much to scare the generally smug middleclassness out of a few of my less enlightened neighbours as to further the cause of a genuinely revolutionary approach to getting stuff done.
I have a postal vote as I’m often not around on the day. The last time I went to a polling station, it was some kind of glorified shed just around the corner – now a station carpark.
I did see the UKippers out in force yesterday with their big signs, catching the commuters en route to the staion and a bit further by Tesco’s roundabout. I wonder if they were outside Sainsbury’s? I’m sure they are there this morning, along with the rest of them.
I think it’s illegal to campaign on the day itself (though Farage ignored this last time when he took up a light aircraft on Election Day to promote UKIP, with consequences I wouldn’t wish on anyone).
I’ve been to church halls, school halls and this year it’ll be the newly restored community hall – exciting.
The dining hall of my son’s Primary School, and the kid’s aren’t getting a day off. They’re taking packed lunches which they will presumably consume in their classrooms. Boo!
The envelope contained two more envelopes, each a little smaller than the other, like a Chinese puzzle or Russian Dolls. I laid them out on the desk and studied them. Something familiar caught my eye; my own name, clear as day on the largest envelope. With trembling fingers I picked it up and looked inside. Empty! What devilry was this? But then inspiration struck; it was the one I had already opened a moment earlier, its contents now strewn across the leather-topped oak.
After a celebratory brandy I delved deeper into the mystery. The second envelope contained detailed, precise instructions on how to navigate the complexity before me, so obviously I threw it aside and ploughed impatiently on. In envelope three – wondrous things. The glory of centuries of democracy, names unfamiliar to me, and beside each, an intriguing box. The final test! Raising my quill I marked an X and sealed the envelope. It bore no address, so I placed it inside the discarded other and called for my man. The second brandy was sweeter than the first.
Two days later a letter addressed to me appeared on my doormat. I knew instantly that I had seen it before. Tearing it open, I found yet more mischief; another envelope, and within this one, a sheet of paper containing a list of names. Beside one name there was inscribed an insubstantial cross. It was inked in a hand I knew as well as my own. It was my own X.
I fucked off back to bed.
This is quite the finest piece of writing it has been my pleasure to read for quite some time – since Mr Little’s euology of (on? about? for?) Messi, in fact.
Our polling station is a shipping container in a pub car park. I entered at about half seven, when it was empty. There was a bloke I thought I recognised from the local band scene working there.
It was Kid Dynamite, in the little village hall around the corner, with the pencil.
My polling station is a local primary school. The first time I voted it was in the church on the Market Square in Durham in 1997. I then went to the pub with my friends and later discovered that my friend Tom had procured a large amount of a certain pharmaceutical stimulant much beloved of bikers, idiots and Lemmy. Nobody else wanted any, very sensibly, so we tooted the lot and I was up for 50 odd (very odd) hours thereafter. Approximately a quarter of that time was splendid; the subsequent three quarters were sad and peculiar and made me feel like the scrapings off the bottom of a rusty chemical toilet tank. I don’t think I ever touched the stuff again, but I might’ve done because I was young and ridiculous.
I voted at 7.02 am this morning – third in the queue before hitting the M25. The polling booth is in a classic church hall with wooden floor and a recessed stage which is certainly an original feature – all old wood and thick layers of varnish. You can imagine generations of spotty yoof playing the hits of the day at church youth club events.
My first election experience would have been one of the ’74 elections – I was too young to vote but was helping out counting voters in. I had started hanging around with the Young Liberals (who had great parties) after pursuing, with modest success, a teen beauty called Julie. She gave me a cold sore which reappears with monotonous regularity to this day and dumped me after 3 weeks.
You and Julie may be the greatest metaphor for the relationship between the electorate and the political class I have ever read.
Dungworth Village Hall – the classic prefab smelling of dry wood, antediluvian lino and the parent and toddler group.
Voting in Dungworth Village Hall? I have visions of that being like a folk version of Stella Street, full of members of Bellowhead, Martin Simpson and the Melrose Quartet.
I think I know where the polling station is I think just for the first time in my life not sure who to vote for! Mind you around here the Tories could put up a dead cat and it would win! but Ill do it anyway I guess !
You are voting for a dead cat? I wish I had that option.
My polling station is the local council run leisure centre, with polling taking place in what appeared to be a multi-purpose room that acts as a gymnasium and meeting hall.
Three ballot boxes, as we also have two local elections taking place, with the ballot box for the parish elections seemingly already full due to the enormous ballot papers inside. Despite having to choose up to five candidates, I could only commit myself to one of the fourteen names on the ballot paper.
I did enjoy telling the rosette wearing twits sat outside the hall that I wouldn’t give them my polling card number as I didn’t have to.
Primary school in Walthamstow, the first person to vote at 7 a.m.
In five years time (in five months if there’s another election) I’ll hopefully be doing the same thing in a Cornish village.
Of course, my vote for Labour down there would be as useful as a Rooney World Cup/European Championship performance.
I was born in Walthamstow. Thorpe Coombe hospital. (So was David Beckham.) My mum was a washer-upper at Wathamstow dog track.
Local primary school for me, a brisk 5 minute walk away. Absolutely nobody other than polling staff there at 11am, not even any tellers outside to annoy.
Three ballot papers as there are district and town council elections here too. Bit of a lucky dip those as hardly anyone has bothered to campaign.
I voted a week ago by post. I’ll miss trogging off to the village hall in all it’s 1960s naffness. I was supposed to be in Berlin this week (hence the postal vote), but work has intervened and the trip got cancelled.
Fairly standard experience except instead of using the old multi-use primary school hall where it has been for the last 25 years, the polling station had been moved to a new multi-use space elsewhere in the school. At 7.15 not all the signage was in place and I had one of those ‘have I really come to the right place’ moments.
It wasn’t over busy. The incumbant MP has been in office since 1987, so change is unlikely.
An amusing except from his Wiki entry which I happened to read the other day –
Is he still on the go? I remember when he first got elected, seems like an eon ago now.
Not bothered yet.
Busy with my brushes.
I’m finding it extremely difficult to whip up any enthusiasm within myself to vote for any of the creeps.
Maybe I’ll wander over later when my eyes get tired from painting.
Then you should go over and write “Do not feed this ballot paper any sweeties as it will become spoiled”.
People have died for your right to do that etc etc
Don’t lecture brother. I’ve voted in every single election including local ones since I first voted on the UKs continued membership of the Common Market back in the 70s.
I will no doubt vote this time too.
Pointless though I know it to be.
Cock up on the postal voting front. Buggers never got the papers to me on my time. Apparently someone screwed up in the Vale of the White Horse. I wasn’t the only one. They offered me a proxy vote for my poxy vote. Made a call last night and it’s all arranged. I could pretend there was an element of suspense in this chain of events but I’d be lying. My former place of abode’s MP is Ed Vaizey. Not the slightest chance of a change there. Still they say the number of votes cast nationally may be important so my vote could matter after all.
I did once participate in an electoral upset in Croydon in 1997 which was a marginal and was a Labour gain. That was actually exciting. To play a decisive part in a long overdue change of government was a bit special I must say.
Like many here my vote (already cast by post) will make absolutely no difference whatsoever in my constituency. But I agree that every vote counts this time because if we have a close run thing with no overall majority, both main parties will be looking to use anything to claim their legitimacy to form a government and to dismiss the other lot as creating a constitutional crisis by trying to claim power from a minority position (even though, of course, it is nothing of the sort). So a headline overall number of votes cast for each party will certainly be one of the stats being heavily used, even though of course it is legally meaningless within our voting system.
The London Evening Standard site has a guide to the location of the polling stations in London. The link to it is illustrated with pictures of the leaders of four parties: David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Nigel Farage, and Nicola Sturgeon. I think I can guess the exact number of votes one of those parties will get in the 73 constituencies in London.
I’ve just cast my vote for Labour.
Unfortunately, I have also transported three aged parents/in-laws to their respective polling stations, where they will each, I am absolutely sure, have voted Tory.
So that’s an overall minus two votes in my constituency for my party of choice.
I am a genius.
Mrs Moose said that for several elections in the 50s-60s her grandmother was dutifully transported to the polling booth by people from the local Conservative association.
She never voted Conservative in her life. She never told them that, naturally.
Just voted Labour. My nose hurts from pinching it quite hard.
You should have set up a bogus scout hut overnight.
It would certainly be easy to arrange round my way (Epping Forest).
Couple of friends looking official, a couple of the kind of pencils on a piece of string that you’d only see at an election, and a big box.
One labour vote, three conservative ‘votes’, family happy.
@deramdaze *makes plans for next election*
Despite all the media mentions it was about 10 this morning before I remembered it was actually voting day today – thanks to google doodles.
Just back from voting. Surprisingly (and for the first time I can remember in this constituency) there was a queue! Maybe G Osborne’s days are numbered!!
We popped down to vote at the wonderful Long Shop Museum, on the site of the former Garretts works: http://www.longshopmuseum.co.uk/
http://i1350.photobucket.com/albums/p773/minibreakfast/garrett%20museum_zpswffuzszw.jpg
My late Grandad made the sign on the front.
It’s a bit too far for me to walk from the car park to the hall that’s used (i.e. fuck all distance) so Mr Breakfast pushed me in my chair up the gravelly slope, which I’m sure did him a power of good. There was an additional ballot paper for the town council election, on which we were informed we could choose up to 15 candidates from the 28 standing, most of whom I’d never heard. Spoiled for choice indeed.
I love steam traction engines, mini. Like the ‘living van’ behind that steam roller, too.
You should go to one of the open days. You’d be chuffed to bits.
Oh come on; CHUFFED! What, nobody?
15? Bloody hell. I got three for the city council at that seemed too many. I ended up with 2 incumbents because I know them to be active on local issues and a third one for no better reason than that she lives in the same street as me (and didn’t belong to a party I would find repugnant if I didn’t have a good opinion of an individual candidate).
In my die hard Tory constituency there was one Labour council candidate, three Tories and one UKIP. The remainder were independents. Knowing what I know about the political makeup around here, the mind slightly boggles at what views might be held by a Windsor resident who doesn’t feel adequately represented by the Tories or UKIP.
(Maybe I’m being unfair and they were committed social liberals, but somehow I doubt it.)
My polling station is the village hall (newly extended, available for weddings etc, etc – call Nether Snurtle 328), around 3/4s of a mile away. I called in on my dinnertime walk, coming home by different footpaths. Saw a couple of Ravens (which I’m hoping have settled in a very prominent tree near us – they certainly make a change from crows and rooks), some Roe deer, a hare and several Buzzards. Saw our neighbour’s utterly gorgeous Aberdeen Angus calves, which will grow up to be utterly delicious Beefs. (that’s enough Country Diary – Ed).
Round this part of Somerset, its District and parish elections as well. I was surprised to see that no Labour candidates were standing for the two District seats. Two Tories, one LD and one Green. I wonder whether this was to aid possible tactical voting? Tories always get them, but we’ll see. The Parish election was not needed, only 5 people standing for the 7 seats.
The constituency is one of the safest Tory seats in the country. I was almost swayed to vote Labour, as I think this election is going to get really dirty, and will hinge as much on the percentage of the total vote a party wins, as much as the number of seats, but just couldn’t. Again. Sorry, dad. Green in both for me.
Postal vote for me this year. Otherwise it would be a school annex down a suburban Berkshire lane. Range Rovers and Hybrids in and out the little adjoining car park. I normally attend on foot with my whippet, consumptive cough and rolled down wellies.
Too hot for a flat cap?
It’s worn out. I must pop into Aquascutum for a new one.
If I stand still I look like the cover of ‘The Road To Wigan Pier’.
Well I was up early and was at the polling station just after 7am and was greeted by a very pretty lady of Dutch origin (I think, could have been Latvian, who knows) who mispronounced my surname, even when I told her the correct pronunciation, but hey, WTF. I saw Alison and Amy from the running club, working, and that wee nonce Davie -not working, doesn’t- with his SNP badge/hat/rosette/underpants… “Oh look” said an old Lady behind me to,her friend “There’s David McP########n” “Ach, poor Davie” said her chum “Bless him”.This guy PERMANENTLY drives a car with four saltires perched on the corner of the roof, and *FREEDOM* written on one side of the car and *NICOLA IS THE VERY LASSIE FOR ME* on the other one. Probably. The local Victoria Hall was the polling booth. Interesting story here, and a true one. Being where we are, which is here, in the West Highlands of Scotland, we were fairly untouched conflict wise in WW2, except for one night in 1941, a Dornier bomber got lost whilst looking for Clydebank, and seeing the lights of the Wee Toon, decided to give it laldy. He bombed the local Royal Hotel, killing a Travelling Salesman, woke up a LD Lorry driver having a kip in his cab, did him too, and generally created merry hell for a couple of minutes. He also straffed the Victoria Hall, which is next to the Royal Hotel, and took some chunks off the high masonary before heading back to wherever he came from. Now the Victoria Hall retained the bullet gouges on the upper structure for years and years as a memoir of some kind to the sacrifices that people made, and as a gesture of memory to the two who lost their lives. That was until 1999something when some fud from the Regional Council who wouldn’t be able to find the Wee Toon on a map decided that this wasn’t very PC or respectful to our German friends and had the gouges filled in. Fud.
Anyroads, in 1965 an effort was made to find the German Pilot responsible and ask him -if he had survived the war, obviously- to come to the Toon, in the spirit of friendship and whatever, to mark the twentieth anniversary of the end of the war.. And find him they did. The guy, whose name was never made public, did survive the war, but not only that, he actually had LIVED in the Toon as a young boy, and only returned to Germany in the mid 1930’s ! He maintained he had no idea that he had bombed his former hometown, and he declined the invitation to return. As you would.
Deed done. Democratic right exercised. Mrs Bungliemutt and I were welcomed into the polling station in our local primary school by an old chap sporting a very military moustache and a blue rosette in a piece of not very subliminal last-minute electioneering. God only knows what I’ve just voted for, as the choices are all pretty uninspiring. The polling station will probably look much the same in 5 years, but I’m not sure the country will.
That sounds like an infringement of the rules around electioneering at polling stations. I know this only because I was once a teller and was – as advised – incognito, but had parked my car (adorned in political colours) in the village hall car park. A complaint was made by the blue rinse brigade and I was told to move my car.
In an immediate tit-for-tat measure I noticed a Tory poster in an upstairs window to the hall, and got that removed. Sadly it was the only victory I could claim on the day.
Keep it in your back pocket for when Dave starts baning on about legitimacy of government. You’ve got him banged to rights.
For several years I was a (non political) parish councillor. A mostly rewarding experience which I would recommend. I was persuaded to it my a fellow parish councillor who wanted a few younger (i.e. working age) people involved.
One year there was one more nomination than there were seats available. An election was necessary held at the same time as the local Council election.
That day I had the unnerving choice of whether to vote for myself. It gives a heightened sense of responsibility knowing 535 people put their cross against your name.
I was in our PC, but didn’t stand this time. I’d recommend it, too, but had decided a few weeks ago that it really wasn’t for me.
A tale to tell!
I claim, though it can never be proved, that I may very well have been the first 18 year old ever to vote in the UK.
Ted Heath went to the country on February 28th 1974, my 18th birthday. I was at the polling station doors (St. Mark’s Church Hall, Saltney, Chester) before 7:00.
I was the first person in to vote and by 7:01 my vote was cast.
Later that evening on Nationwide (BBC news magazine programme that Afterworders of a similar vintage will remember) I was disgusted to see a live interview with a young woman who shared my birthday who had just voted, celebrating the fact that she, an 18 year old, had voted on her birthday. WTFF? I’d voted nearly 12 hours earlier and where were the BBC cameras for me?
Michael Barratt, you were a dickhead then and you still are in your grave.
Nationwide: A Lesson from History
Parliamentary vote was done a couple of weeks ago, whilst laying in bed, supervised by the GLW. The day after I posted it the local election papers arrived. I cast my vote and sealed up the envelopes and then noticed I’d not put the ballot form inside. It took quite a while to unpeel them.
Shit! Election today? Forgot. How come nothing in the media to remind me….
OK, I know there’s still a minute or 4 but my struggle is with a sitting incumbent who is a good local MP and whom I respect. But is Tory. I can’t, just can’t but I would if I could. So I won’t.
Michael Fabricant will still get in.
No old Labour left really, is there…..
Thanks, Tone.
Michael Fabricant…. not so much a man with a wig on as a wig with a man underneath.
My playlist today has been Wake Up The Nation and Selling England By The Pound.
If you’re interested.
My ear worm today is Tull’s Fallen On Hard Times.
And the winner is the hairdressers on Chesil Beach!
Thanks @ernietothecentreoftheearth.
It makes me wonder whether the nation’s political complexion would be different if we all voted in hairdressers (not establishments I have much cause to visit).
Developing the idea further, is there a case for deliberately placing polling stations for context? Drop in centres, Remploy factories, war cemeteries spring to mind. Any more for any more?
Flushed with success, I am now taking an open topped bus tour of Portland.
Church hall for me on the way to work. Great British tradition, be a shame if we ever went digital.
Shame and a) it would crash and b) it would be hacked. Or both.
Hardly onerous to go to a polling station or organise a postal or proxy vote, either, is it?
How many more people would vote if they could do so on a phone? Not many, is my guess.
Engagement with the electorate is the problem, not ease of voting. There’s a vicious circle of youth disengagement; policies are aimed at the old, which leads to further youth disenchantment and so on.
I voted yesterday, late in the afternoon, in the hall attached to the church in our street. My older son was with me and my wife. It was his eighteenth birthday, the first day in his life on which he had a right to vote.
It was very sedate. There was hardly anyone there. The party reps outside who asked to check our ballot numbers were very pally and civilized towards each other.