My day at elections

Last thursday, some of you may have been aware that there was an election. Well, there were actually two, European Parliament and County Council, and I was working on one of the poll stations, Red Cross Centre in Earlswood, giving out ballot papers and crossing people off who had come in to vote. All very fun. I will tell you about it.

The days starts at 6:30 AM, getting all the signs put up so people know for sure there is a polling station there; It's amazing how many people can't see them and get lost! The first people trickled through at about 7, people on there way to work, and a cheery binman who could be heard singing from a while away, and chatted to us a bit about how pleasent the day was. Between working hours we got mostly older, retired people who were so hard of hearing you had to shout at them, while others just didn't understand. Anything.

We had a tally going on how many people expressed the same opinions. Most were "My goodness, that's a big ballot paper", or along those lines (shocked expressions included here) in reference to the ridiculously huge European Parliament ballot paper for the South East region (though at least it meant there plently of parties to choose from I suppose). Others commented on the weather, but only one person came up with the topic of the last few weeks, stating "We'd like to vote for the party that makes us all MPs so we can claim lots of expenses." We chortled.

The big development came around noonish, when we were informed that a party (turned out to be UKIP) had complained that the folding of the ballot papers meant people weren't seeing their box, and so were instead voting for other anti-euro parties. This made our job harder, because we needed to fold the papers so people could fit them in the boxes, and it meant we ended up folding them, then unfolding them when handing them to voters. It also didn't make much difference in our area, as the way they were folded meant in fact UKIP were one of the first parties shown. And the problem was only in South Yorkshire. GRRR!

But I digress... The big rush came between 6 and 8, when we had 60 or 70 voters each hour, compared with roughly 20 at other times. In this time a lot of people, annoyingly, asked us what parties stood for what, mostly who was anti-europe. We told them we couldn't tell them, and so they went away to the booths, many could be heard uttering "here, this top one, BNP, they have a british flag, they're probably anti-europe". I worried that aphabetical order might end up letting the racists in, but in the South East this turned out not to be the case.

The real issue there, though, is why people were out voting without even looking at the parties policies. I complained about the lack of canvassing and literature, but after my ramblings on here that started to pick up. I imagine it was similar for most people, so why were they so ignorant towards these parties? Many people also didn't realise there were two elections, despite the polling cards stating this and numerous radio and TV programmes and newspapers doing the same.

In the end, the turnout for Earlswood and Whitebushes was 37%. That figure was similar across the borough and county. It really makes you think that democracy is all worthless, if less than half the people don't bother to vote. I blame the media again. They go on about voter apathy, not voting becuse of this elections scandal, even going as far as to say that there were no alternatives to the mainstream three parties other than UKIP and BNP, an opinion stated numerous times on Question time. What a load of rubbish. Ok, I was happy that Reigate central elected a Lib Dem candidate, well done to you, but Redhill had a Green candidate who was only 170 votes behind the tory one. In fact they seem to me to be the only choice at the moment, and if you are annoyed about the expenses of MPs, then the Greens are the best way to go without moving in Racism or Facism.

So basically, I learned a bit about the people of earlswood, another area which sadly is full of decent people, possibly former Labour supporters, who have been brainwashed into blaming immigration for their problems instead of politicians and capitalists (yeah, I said it). Also, I learned that people will still blindly vote for the tories, ignoring their abismal record of money wasting and poor social services. At least the people of Reigate saw sense, now others must follow their lead.