Opinion : One election down, one to go!

Thankfully the 2017 County Council elections are over.

The campaigning is over, the vote has taken place, the result is in and all that remains is for my good self to take the election leaflets that came through my letter box to the dump and I can consider the whole event over and done with.

With a possible restructuring of local government in Buckinghamshire on the cards its very likely that the elections that have just taken place will soon be irrelevant. After all if there is a new organisation looking after the running of the County then surely there will need to be new elections too?

After looking at the results of the election, it was interesting to note that while the Conservatives won 41 seats (or 83% of the total seats) on the Council they only managed to get 53.1% of the overall vote. While the Liberal Democrats, who got 18.6% of the overall vote, only got four (or 8.5% of the total seats) on the council.

Yours truly has been pondering how, if a proportional representation style of voting system was in operation, the result would have been very different. Once again an election has given a political party a disproportionate amount of power to the share of the votes they received.

My good self finds the whole election process most amusing.

For example we get a polling card through our door yet we are not obliged to show the polling card or any other form of identification when we vote at the polling station.

At the polling station our names are crossed off the electoral list in pencil, the serial number of our voting slip is recorded against our number of the electoral register again in pencil and we mark the voting paper using a pencil too.

Why on earth isn’t a marker that uses a permanent form of ink used? After all pencil can simply be rubbed out and the records changed!

As no identity documents are requested imposters could even turn up and vote for someone else indeed one would get away with it providing the real person did not appear later in the day. I wonder how many votes were cast in the name of elderly, infirm and those in other categories who were unable to attend a polling station and therefore never voted?

The ballot papers appear to be just normal pieces of paper, once upon a time a ‘stamp’ that marked the paper was used but now there is nothing indeed it would be very easy for someone so just slip ‘extra’ pre-prepared ballot papers into the ballot box.

When my good self went to vote the car park at the polling station appeared to have a disproportionately high number of taxis parked, unattended in the car park. It was almost as if they had been left there to prevent voters from parking and voting.

In my opinion if a venue used as a polling station has a car park attached to it there should be rules brought in to prevent vehicles, other than those used by the actual voters, from blocking the parking spaces and preventing genuine voters from parking.

Anyway, thank heavens these elections are over. Just the general election to go and then once again we can rest in peace for another five years at least.

What do you think?

My blogs are published every Tuesday and Friday evening around 8.00pm here on the WycombeToday.com website.

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