The queues of people outside the polling stations who were denied their vote in the election were victims of council cutbacks.
Elections are organised by local councils’ “democratic services” departments, many of which had their funding slashed this year.
They had hoped to save money by moving all counting to the next day instead of doing it overnight – but that ended up not happening.
Instead they cut back on workers on the polling stations. And especially in working class areas, where turnout is often low, they cut corners.
This meant that the high turnout left them completely under-resourced for the number of people wanting to vote.
The reason some polling stations ran out of ballot papers is that they had not even had enough printed for everyone registered to vote.
It just goes to show how our rights can be trampled by cuts.
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