No excuses for yet another voting fiasco

AFTER the great 2010 election debacle – when voters were left locked out of polling booths at 10pm, because illprepared staff could not cope with the demand – the Electoral Commission promised lessons would be learned.

Yesterday, however, there were reports of similar chaos afflicting the 2015 contest – which, of course, is so close that the disenfranchisement of just a handful of voters may be decisive in many constituencies.

In Darlington, there was utter confusion after the name of one candidate was missed off the ballot paper.

Meanwhile, complaints poured in from thousands of expats (many of them Tory supporters) whose postal votes never arrived – disgracefully denying them their democratic rights. In London, voters who had used the Electoral Commission’s new online registration system turned up at polling stations to be told there was no record of them, so they couldn’t participate.

This is the same computerised system which was last month blamed for the size of the electoral roll shrinking by 850,000 in a single year, despite an ever-growing population.

The authorities changed the rules so that anybody who moves house or turns 18 now has to register individually online – but inexplicably failed to make sure everybody was aware of the new regime.

The utterly predictable result was huge numbers of potential voters missing out.

It is too early to know the true extent and impact of these blunders, which could all too easily end up with contests in some knife-edge constituencies being settled in the courts.

We also fear there may be worse still to emerge, given officialdom’s woeful record for tackling postal vote fraud in many inner-city constituencies.

What is certain, however, is that the Commission – led by Left-wing quango queen Jenny Watson – has no excuse for yesterday’s fiasco, given that the Fixed Term Parliament Act allowed it FIVE years to prepare.

Once, this country had the finest civil servants and electoral machinery in the world. Shamefully, our modern day bureaucracy – which wrecks almost everything it touches – is more akin to a banana republic.