Conservative Party leader David Cameron said today a new government must ensure there was no repeat of chaotic election day scenes in which people were still queuing in their hundreds outside polling stations when the ballot boxes closed.
The Electoral Commission pledged a “thorough review” into problems around the country, including London, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle.
Prime minister Gordon Brown was among a raft of politicians who expressed concern at the reports from some areas of queues up to two hours long and people being turned away from voting at 10pm in the face of high turnouts and low staff numbers at polling stations.
A spokesman for Mr Brown said hewas “very concerned by the reports and would support a thorough investigation into them”.
Making his victory speech in Witney, Oxfordshire, Mr Cameron thanked local officials in his constituency for a well-run election, but said that had not been the case in some parts of the country. “An early task for a new government is to get to the bottom of what has happened and make sure that it never happens again,” he said.
The Electoral Commission said it was a cause for “serious concern” that many people who wanted to vote were prevented from doing so, and that there should have been sufficient resources allocated to make sure everyone was able to vote.
There were angry scenes at polling stations in Hackney, east London, where would-be voters staged a sit-in after they were told they could not vote, and in Liberal Democrats leader Nick Clegg’s constituency of Sheffield Hallam, where students tried to prevent ballot boxes being taken to the count after they were turned away.
In some places, including two polling stations in Newcastle, voters were ushered into the building before 10pm when the doors had to be shut, while at one site in Lewisham, ballot papers were handed out to the queue before the deadline. But there were reports in the Manchester Withington constituency of people queuing for more than two hours before being turned away because the polls had closed.
Jenny Watson, chairwoman of the commission, said the current system was “at breaking point” and the law might need to be changed as a result of the scenes witnessed last night.
Additional resources should have been deployed when it became clear that turnout was higher than anticipated. And she said that if there were constituencies which had not followed the rules, they could be subject to challenges. She said returning officers would have to “answer to us and answer to local voters”.
Ms Watson told BBC News: “The law is extremely clear. They have the guidance. They should have done what the law says. If they haven’t done that ... they may well be subject to election petitions.”
Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman said it would be “quite right” if some results were challenged because voters were turned away without being able to cast their ballot.
“If there is any close outcome that is going to be produced by that, there should be a legal challenge - and quite right too. It is fundamental that people get their right to vote," she said on her arrival at the count for her Camberwell and Peckham constituency in south east London.
Tory party chairman Eric Pickles commented: “It’s ridiculous. Of course people should be able to vote Surely to goodness the returning officers could have just put the people in the polling station and continued.”
The two Labour parliamentary candidates in Hackney, where residents were voting for their MP, local councillors and borough mayor, have launched an official complaint over their supporters’ inability to vote.
And in Sheffield, the returning officer John Mothersole apologised to voters for getting it “wrong”.
Students in the constituency complained they had been treated differently from local residents by being put in separate, “slower” queues as polling station staff attempted to process crowds of voters.
PA