Could the United Kingdom's 2010 general election become the new Florida?

I'm writing this as the first indications of the United Kingdom election result filter in - the exit polls are predicting that the Conservatives will be the largest party, but still falling short of an overall majority in the Commons. But of course exit polls are not the real result, so the suspense continues ...

However, one story that is beginning to emerge is that there are a number of constituencies in which prospective voters were turned away from the polling place, despite being in a queue to get their ballots at the time the polls closed. So, for example, the BBC's live coverage reported at 10:41 pm UK time:

Police have been called to some polling stations to move on people who wanted to vote but couldn't because they were still queuing outside at 10pm. In the Manchester Withington constituency, about 200 people were turned away. A spokesman for the returning officer for Manchester said: "The law states that the doors to polling stations must be closed at 10pm exactly, and no-one may be issued with a ballot paper after 10pm."

The Guardian likewise blogged:

We're hearing a lot of reports about problems with voting. Labour sources have complained about people not being able to vote at some polling stations in Milton Keynes, Sheffield and Newcastle. Harman has just told Sky that she saw people queuing outside a polling station in her constituency just before 10pm.

(The BBC also has a number of individual voters' stories here.)

This seems to be the result of a heavy (by recent UK standards) turnout which overstretched the electoral officials, "efficiency moves" by returning officers, as well as the fact that the UK holds their elections on a weekday without a legal right to time off work to vote - meaning that some shift workers will still be arriving at the polling places shortly before the 10pm close. (Compared with us here in New Zealand, where election day must be on a Saturday and your employer must let you have time off to vote.)

It's also interesting to note that this wouldn't happen in New Zealand. Under our Electoral Act, "Every elector who at the close of the poll is present in a polling place for the purpose of voting shall be entitled to receive a ballot paper and to mark and deposit it in the same manner as if he or she had voted before the close of the poll."

I haven't been able to find out what the legal position in the UK is; I'll keep looking and do an update when I find it out.

[UPDATE: it appears that the polling hours are set by Part 1 of Schedule 1 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 "In the case of a general election, [polling hours are] between the hours of 7 in the morning and 10 at night on the eleventh day after the last day for delivery of nomination papers." Further, there is no express power for a returning officer to extend the hours of voting, or to give a voter a ballot paper after polling hours finish (such as we have in NZ).

UPDATE 2: A representative of the UK Electoral Commission has just appeared on BBC laying out the legal advice given to returning officers, which is that at 10pm the doors of the polling stations must be closed, with only those voters holding ballot papers at 10pm permitted to cast a vote (i.e. no person queuing up to get a ballot can get one).]

But if the overall election result is close - and remember that the results in a few marginal seats can have a major impact in a close election - then this issue could become the basis for a raft of election petitions. Which means that the ultimate decision on the election outcome might come down to the courts deciding whether or not the election officials acted lawfully.

[UPDATE: A problem here seems to be that some returning officers allowed people to enter the polling place and receive ballots after the closing time, while others did not. So a basis for a petition may be the unequal treatment of voters - some got to do so, others didn't, dependent on the individual returning officer's decision.]

If so, us election geeks have something new to replace "Florida" as our touchstone for what happens when election processes go wrong.