Hackney Elections 2010: How was it for you?

Illustration: Zosienka
Hackney Citizen is seeking feedback, comments and criticism about the Hackney elections 2010. Let us know what you think in our comments box below.
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I was not allowed to vote today because Hackney Council gave me the wrong information on the telephone. My postal vote papers did not arrrive but they gave me the address of my local polling station and told me it would be ok to just turn up and vote anyway.
I was turned away by staff there who seemed very concerned that they had also turned away several other people for the same reason – misinformation from Hackney Council. What a waste of votes!
I am surprised there is no result yet – could it really be going down to the wire.
I was amazed that the people staffing the polling station at St Mary &All Angels in Lavender Grove were unable to tell the people where the neighbouring polling booths were. Some ladies from the “OC” area were given the council’s number to call. Why was there not a map on the wall showing people where the other polling booths were?
Voted at the School on Detmold Rd,E5 I’ve been voting there since 1997, this was the first time I have had to queue, although I was only there about 20 minutes.
I voted at Clissold Leisure Centre at an off-peak time earlier in the day.
I did have a wait, but it wasn’t so bad. Having seen the Kerry v Bush election queues tailing back for miles, I knew I wanted to get in there early.
The only thing that cheezed me off is somebody left a Hackney Labour leaflet in my polling booth.
Funnily enough, it looked like a ballot paper and had all the Hackney Labour councillors from my ward names’ ticked in red ink. I am sure it was a mistake. /sarc off.
Electoral conduct worthy of an authoritarian state and results to match.
-Obstruction of contestation: it appears that one of the mayoral candidates was misinformed by Council staff about the rules governing his freepost material, resulting in his material not being included in the mayoral booklet. Council staff subsequently misinformed voters that he was not on the ballot at all, evidently due to the Council not taking appropriate measures to brief call centre staff on the situation.
– Obstruction of voting: inadequate provision of polling facilities, either through poor planning, an effort to keep costs down, or both. The result was that at least several hundred registered electors were prevented from voting as the polls closed while they were still queuing at polling stations. This probably did not change the result, but it could have resulted in election candidates failing to retain their deposits.
– Delays in the announcement of results. The Council’s web site stated that the parliamentary election results would be announced between 2.00 and 6.00 am on Friday 7 May. Instead they were announced between 13.00 and 15.00pm that day. The reasons for this are unclear, but at the very least this indicates poor planning on the part of the Council elections department, resulting in long hours for tired staff. At worst it suggests that there may have been legal problems with large numbers of (postal?) votes.
– Lack of transparency: It appears there were significant breaches of transparency at the count for the Hackney South parliamentary seat, as detailed here: http://daveraval.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=73&Itemid=1
All four of these failings qualify as serious forms of electoral malpractice according to academic criteria for evaluating free and fair elections, as detailed at http://www.essex.ac.uk/government/electoralmalpractice/.
I look forward to seeing the Electoral Commission’s investigation into the elections in Hackney.
Where’s the story about the council threatening legal action against you?
Never mind, I found it 🙂
The way that council elections are conducted results in grossly unrepresentative councils.
By allowing each party to field up to three candidates in each ward, it results in all three elected members from each ward invariably coming from the same party.
Labour won 50 of the 57 council places (87%), yet their share of the vote is way way off this.
What is the point of local politics if it doesn’t fairly represent voting patterns?
It would be much more sensible to only allow each party to field a maximum of two candidates in each ward, as this would produce a far more representative council.
In Cazenove the 3 Lib-Dems won it originally, but one defected to Labour. So not really a Lib-Dem gain.
This was due to the large Jewish postal vote.
In Lordship the Conservative leader threw out Mr Tesler who stood as an independent: because of this the Conservative leader lost the large Jewish postal vote and lost his seat.
In Springfield the large Jewish postal vote returned 2 Jewish candidates. The newer candidate receiving many more.
The large discrepancy between the votes of the Jewish candidates in each ward is very revealing.
The headline of the post-election Hackney Today is ‘Hackney speaks’. I’m not sure about this.
What about the reported 270 people who were turned away from the polling stations at 10pm?
What about the untold numbers of people who simply didn’t bother because the queues were too long?
What about the people who never received their postal ballot?
What about the people who turned up and were told they were not on the register (either because their registration had gone astray, or they’d been taken off for some reason, or they’d been sent to the wrong polling station by the council)?
These situations all occured, and many were told by council officers there wouldn’t be a problem even though there clearly was.
And, finally, what about all the people who DIDN’T vote Labour?
They haven’t spoken. Labour now hold 50 out of 57 council seats.
This isn’t a direct result of democracy. Labour got less than half the votes last time (2006) and I guess the result is similar this time (if a little higher – not yet sure of the official figures.)
Hackney Labour benefitted massively from an anti-Tory swing in the General Election, the resulting high turnout, and the fact that loyal Labour voters simply vote Labour for everything.
Many people didn’t even realise there was a local election on!
And for the top Labour candidate in my ward to get way more votes than the existing councillors, whose names are well-known, despite having lost out on a seat in the last local election in 2006, goes some way to demonstrating how arbitrary voting is.
Hackney speaks? I don’t think so.
I was present at the count from the start on Thursday until 3 am and from 11 am until the final result had been announced at 11 pm, approximately on Friday.
Quite apart from the problems at polling stations and the extremely slow count(s), the Returning Officer, Mr Tim Shields failed to organise the announcements of results in a dignified manner, even fluffing his lines on occasion and worse, he showed a marked partiality, by gesture and tone of voioce, towards the Labour group, addressing them directly, instead of the assembled delegates in general.
This became more and more obvious as the evening wore on. (I use the word advisedly).
Mr Shields ought to be censured and reminded of the duties of a Returning Officer, including strict impartiality.
I agree with other contributors that the result is a failure of democracy, saddling Hackney, a Borough with many inadequately addressed problems, with a Council out of step with the government and without a balanced opposition.
In his address, Mr Pipe declared the Labour team would “defend Hackney against cuts”, but of course they cannot deliver.
Sadly, this was probably the worst-run election in the country. And I’m not exaggerating! There’s a whole list of errors, our Agent counted about 30 and I’ve put a short list of them on http://bit.ly/8YLRTL (note: website down for maintenance today, should be back tomorrow).
Regardless of the result, the process was a sad day for democracy.
As for “Hackney Speaks” – the headline in Hackney Today. Look forward to 4 more years of Labour party propaganda in that paper – paid for by…err.. you, the council tax payer. Unless of course Central Government decides to ban councils producing their own papers. I’ve heard a rumour (just a rumour for now) that they might!
I dont vote whatsoever as no one of importance ever walks around Hackney like they do in the areas where the Etonians and the Fox hunters dwell to ask me what i want, every election its the same thing
All i see is constant conflict with me and the system until changes occur that include people like me as we are native too.