Djanogly wants an overnight count. Why?

In a recent article in the ever better News and Crier, Jonathan Djanogly MP wants to keep an overnight count for election night. Whilst I can understand the reasons why, I disagree with the reasons.

I feel the main reason why he Djanogly wants an overnight count is that he can get of out the constituency and back to his main home, the one in London. Of course, THE PARTY will be in London and Djanogly will be stuck in St Ives waiting for the result. Being in London will mean he can receive the call to Government and be in position to start being a Minister without delay. I can understand all this. I disagree with these reasons but I can understand it.

Before we condemn this idea out of hand, lets look at the logistics. The likelihood is this will be a double poll with national and local elections. Polls open at 7am and close at 10pm. This will mean that those staffing each polling station will have to be there at 6am to set up and then go onto the count until 2, 3 or even 4am. This is a 19 to 22 hour day. And then back later in the morning to count the local elections.

The likelihood is we will have one ballot box for the General Election and one for locals. To ensure all ballots are correctly counted all ballot boxes should be opened and verified (this means the number of ballots in each box matches the number of ballots issued). All the postal ballots which were received during the day need to be processed and added to the other ballots. Because this Government has widen the use of postal votes these need to be verified and this takes time.

Lets have a humane election and have the count on the next day.