UPDATE 4 June 2009: Apparently Hackney Council have updated their website and there’s now a full list of polling stations available as a PDF.
Right, I’m frustrated. It’s the Mayoral elections tomorrow along with voting for the European parliament and the London Assembly. There’s been a lot of fuss made about postal voting and the polling cards being overly complicated. To be honest, I welcome the opportunity to vote by post - it saves me a queue at least. It does deprive me of the experience of participating in democracy but I’ll get over it. And as for the voting papers themselves, I read the instructions, drew some crosses and that was that. Simple.
But… My housemate is voting in person. He asked me what on the surface appeared to be a simple question: Where’s the nearest polling station? So I hit Google for what I thought was the most sensible query. I then spent 20mins going around the various local authority sites including Hackney Council and London Elects, amongst others, only to be confounded every time. I found loads of information about the mechanics of filling in the forms but nothing about polling stations, save a phone number which will undoubtedly be busy all of tomorrow. I admit that I wasn’t reading particularly carefully but that’s what good site design is all about - allowing users to find information quickly and accurately. The Hackney Council site homepage didn’t even mention the elections and the London Elect site’s ‘How do I vote’ section lead me to a phone number.
I eventually gave up… I can’t remember the last time I couldn’t find something on the internet! It’s an absolute disgrace that this information isn’t readily available considering current voter apathy and limited attention spans. All it takes is a little bit of thought, a splash of planning and some consideration for the user.
