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jackI voted on the way to work, at Arbury Community Centre on Campkin Road. It was behind a cafe, which was new to me, but was clearly marked and friendly and efficient.
There was no problem with not having a polling card (which legally there shouldn't be, but I was all prepared to argue if necessary), he didn't even ask, just asked my address.
Thank you to everyone who helped out with the election in any way.
I think it could be clearer that the tellers are volunteers for the parties with no official role and you don't _have_ to say anything to them (even though, it's usually good to). They're often the first person you speak to and usually helpful, but might look official when they're not quite. But that's a fairly minor quibble. And having volunteers from most of the major parties who are watching and politely cooperating both sets a good example, and makes it harder for anyone to get away with shenanigans.
I'm also grateful to all the things that go _right_. There are often rumbles of threats of disenfranchisement in various ways (making some polling stations harder to use than others, making it harder for some people to register than others, etc). But we have a system which is better than most countries (I think?) in being fairly reliable -- can we PLEASE keep it that way and screw it up? There are definitely improvements to make, but can we look for things that will make voting more accessible for people who have problems at the moment (problems registering without an address, problems being intimidated by family, problems getting to a polling station, etc), not just randomly throwing away all the good features in favour of some ill-thought-out internet-poll thing...
There was no problem with not having a polling card (which legally there shouldn't be, but I was all prepared to argue if necessary), he didn't even ask, just asked my address.
Thank you to everyone who helped out with the election in any way.
I think it could be clearer that the tellers are volunteers for the parties with no official role and you don't _have_ to say anything to them (even though, it's usually good to). They're often the first person you speak to and usually helpful, but might look official when they're not quite. But that's a fairly minor quibble. And having volunteers from most of the major parties who are watching and politely cooperating both sets a good example, and makes it harder for anyone to get away with shenanigans.
I'm also grateful to all the things that go _right_. There are often rumbles of threats of disenfranchisement in various ways (making some polling stations harder to use than others, making it harder for some people to register than others, etc). But we have a system which is better than most countries (I think?) in being fairly reliable -- can we PLEASE keep it that way and screw it up? There are definitely improvements to make, but can we look for things that will make voting more accessible for people who have problems at the moment (problems registering without an address, problems being intimidated by family, problems getting to a polling station, etc), not just randomly throwing away all the good features in favour of some ill-thought-out internet-poll thing...
no subject
Date: 2015-05-07 10:02 pm (UTC)I don't really like the idea of compulsory voting, and certainly not without at minimum preferential voting as well as NOTA/RON.
If we banned telling but retained optional voting, I expect the party response would be a lot more direct contact with supporters to painstakingly record if they've voted (tbh though we already contact lots of people whose number is already on a telling sheet that wasn't processed by the time the contact-supporters list was produced).