Voting revamp after election chaos

Plans include dividing parts of Sheffield that saw the biggest turnout into smaller polling areas, providing more polling stations in the areas that faced pressure on election night and introducing quicker monitoring arrangements to react to emerging queues.

Police were called to sit-in protests at three polling stations in the city on May 6 after an estimated 400 people were unable to vote by the 10pm deadline. At one station, students unable to vote tried to prevent ballot boxes being taken to the count.

People were turned away after long queues formed at polling stations in Nick Clegg's Hallam constituency – where he gained a majority of 15,284 votes – and also in the Heeley constituency, where Meg Munn won by 5,807 votes.

The disruption led to Sheffield Council's chief executive, John Mothersole, choosing to pay back the 20,000 he received for being the city's returning officer.

He said: "We're keen, as everyone in the city is who was not able to vote, that the situation that arose on May 6 does not happen again in Sheffield.

"We are delighted turnout was so high and that so many Sheffield people did want to vote. We recognise that we had problems at five of our 207 polling stations where we had a phenomenal turnout and that was not acceptable."

He added: "Since then we have been actively looking at ways to put that right and think outside the box on how we can, acting within current regulations, improve electors' experience of voting in Sheffield in the future."

Other options being considered in Sheffield include employing more staff to help polling stations that are under pressure, looking at the layout of certain polling stations and using more voting booths.

A council spokesman also said that there were plans to implement "better queue management" based on addresses and polling card numbers.

Students claimed that they were discriminated against during this year's polls after queues were divided into "residents" and "students" with permanent residents of Sheffield given priority. Mr Mothersole said some of the ideas for overhauling the voting process had already been discussed with the presidents of both Sheffield Hallam and Sheffield University students' unions.

He said: "We've met with both universities' students union presidents and had very constructive and cordial meetings.

"We have of course reiterated our apology and explained that there was no intention to discriminate against students and I believe that was accepted.

"We will make it clear to all our polling station staff that we will not divide voters, other than by address or polling card number."

Sheffield Council is undertaking its own internal review as to what happened on May 6 and is also co-operating with the Electoral Commission's national review.

The Electoral Commission has pledged to carry out a review of what happened in Sheffield and a number of other cities, including London, Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle.

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