the end of democracy...

at least for these elections.

I'm not 100 percent convinced about the electoral system here. I'm pretty unconvinced by the two part election, and feel that a bit of PR in the first ballot would be a great development.

I really didn't like the way the result is announced. The results are known pretty much as soon as the ballots close, due to some SCARILY accurate exit polling, but the news is embargoed for several hours to be announced at a set time on the news. But by that point, due to social networks and some really clever word play everyone knows and knows the share of the vote, making the actual announcement (despite it's huge build-up on the news) a bit of a damp squib.

There's also the fact that spoilt ballots are not reported. making the 51.64% - 48.36% result a little dubious. I've always liked spoilt ballots, it's one of my favourite forms of protesting in democracy, and it's a shame to see it ignored. I just checked and over 2 million or 5% of ballots were spoiled.

But there are good things too, most notably the variety of candidates with a wide range of political ideologies which put the uk to shame, and the high level of voter engagement and turnout (80%!!!!)

But one of my favourite things are these boards which appear all over the country (i think one by each polling station, but there seem to be more) and they provide one board for each candidate,in theory at least providing a level playing field for publicity. It's kind of sad to see them all cleaned up and ready to be taken away.