Elections 2019

And the big nasty EU haven't made us change the day we vote.

Australia have their elections on a Saturday (this Saturday), but I think their voting closes earlier in the evening as TV coverage begins as early as 5pm. Sure the US polls close earlier in the evening too. We may do it in the week but have from 7am to 10pm to vote. I suspect if they moved it to Sundays they'd close the polls a few hours earlier.

I don't really see what the problem is to be honest. The vote is counted within a few days, why does a short delay really matter? I suspect the real issue is disappointment/embarassment at the poster booking the wrong day off.

Don't know if that was a typo, but the last general election not to be held on a Thursday was 1931, and the 1978 Hamilton by-election was on a Wednesday to avoid the opening game of the World Cup the next day.

We’re in a mess? I don’t think so. Much less of a mess than the rest of Europe which is pretty much on its knees.

Well it’s my birthday anyway so I’ll still have fun, but it just seems better to have the election programme starting as the polls close. It’s news. It shouldn’t be 3 days old!

It's not news until the votes have been counted. That happens at the convenience of the election organisers, not the broadcasters. Much like how some areas of the UK don't start to count the votes until the next day rather than paying people to work all night.

From a practical point of view are votes counted during the downtime or can they not be counted until the last polls in Europe close. If they're all counted before hand the election night programme can be done and dusted in half an hour.

The validation exercise can be done before the count starts as the final ballot boxes are sealed across Europe. So the ballots can be stacked ready to roll.

An interesting thing with Party Political Broadcasts in France. Rather than staggering them with one scheduled for each party, France 2 shows every single one back to back with hard coded subtitles and the choice to offer sign language.

This I suspect is to offer due impartiality to the voter by showing differing opinions in one scheduled slot.

I can't see it happening in the UK where so much time would have to be allocated, especially to commercial PSB's who have to show these broadcasts.

Seems like the opposite to impartiality to me. Such a situation is likely to lead to undue prominence for the first and last parties to be shown as very few purposely choose to watch PPBs meaning that the majority of the audience is likely to be people slow to move away from the previous programme or tuning in early to watch the following programme meaning that the first and last broadcasts would be likely to have a significantly higher audience than those in the middle.

I know they're a part of Eurovision now but didn't realise Australia had infiltrated the EU as well!

Indeed, if they did that here nobody would watch them, at least now you just happen across them sandwiched after the regional news