The British Third World Ballot

This May 7th Telegraph article details the shortcomings of the current and aparently archaic ballot in the U.K. The day after the election fiasco that took place in the midst of an important election numerous media sources from the BBC to MSNBC have been criticizing Jenny Watson, the Chairman of the Election Commission. These attacks stem from numerous claims that election comission has become complacent with their outdated system at the polls. Reports that strict timing requirements were ignored and that many of the polling stations had run out of paper before the official closing of the polls at 10 p.m. All of these mistakes led to the misrepresentation of several districts and the loss of thousands of votes. Many British citizens were angered at this chaos because of the close race for the most seats in parliament.

This event calls into question the legitimacy of the U.K. government becasue with the race being so close they couldn't afford to mess up the voting and now the citizens have a reason to question the outcome. This also brings up holes in their transparency because the governtment has denied a recount even with the uproar in the public.