I'm impressed
A couple of months ago I received a form allowing me to apply for a postal vote. All well and good, especially for students studying outside their home constituency, but given the fiasco of the postal votes in the last few elections, I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to take up an opportunity for my vote to be conveniently ‘lost’. So I um-ed and ah-ed and put the letter to one side.
By the time the election date was announced last week, I had managed to lose the letter. The election will be on a Thursday, so there is no way I can get back home for the day and miss four or five lectures and a violin lesson. I had a suspicion that the deadline for applying for a postal vote had passed, and was toying with the possibility of voting by proxy and wondering how to go about it…
…and then on Saturday a polling card was delivered to everyone in my university accommodation. It appears that somehow, without any of us informing anyone (either here or at home) that we have moved, we have all been registered to vote here. Impressive, if slightly spooky in a Big Brother kind of way.
Having said that, I’m not entirely sure I want to be catapulted into a new constituency without being asked first, but at least I get to vote. Granted, I have more interest in what goes on in my home constituency, but I don’t really have a leg to stand on there since I never quite got round to putting myself on the electoral role for the constituency that S. and I now live in (as opposed to my parents’).
I’d still be interested to know how they managed to automatically register all of us here. It seems to show a level of common sense and forethought not usually displayed by politicians or local administrators in this country.
By the time the election date was announced last week, I had managed to lose the letter. The election will be on a Thursday, so there is no way I can get back home for the day and miss four or five lectures and a violin lesson. I had a suspicion that the deadline for applying for a postal vote had passed, and was toying with the possibility of voting by proxy and wondering how to go about it…
…and then on Saturday a polling card was delivered to everyone in my university accommodation. It appears that somehow, without any of us informing anyone (either here or at home) that we have moved, we have all been registered to vote here. Impressive, if slightly spooky in a Big Brother kind of way.
Having said that, I’m not entirely sure I want to be catapulted into a new constituency without being asked first, but at least I get to vote. Granted, I have more interest in what goes on in my home constituency, but I don’t really have a leg to stand on there since I never quite got round to putting myself on the electoral role for the constituency that S. and I now live in (as opposed to my parents’).
I’d still be interested to know how they managed to automatically register all of us here. It seems to show a level of common sense and forethought not usually displayed by politicians or local administrators in this country.
posted by Gonetomars at 9:26 pm
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