Rapportene om rot og underbemanning i valglokalene er alvorlige nok i seg selv: mange fikk ikke stemt selv etter timer i kø. Det var for få valgmedarbeidere. Noen steder slapp man opp for stemmesedler.

Flere steder stengte dørene med flere hundre mennesker utenfor som ikke fikk stemt. Når man visste at vinnerens margin var i størrelsesorden på køen eller mindre, reiser det spørsmålet om hele valget er rettferdig.

Det er forbausende at så mye rot og sommel kan forekomme i et land som Storbritannia.

En tjenestemann avviser klagene og sier folk hadde 15 timer å stemme på. Men noen som bor like ved valglokalet sier: «Vi gikk ut for å stemme kl.1800, men valgte å gå hjem pga lang kø, kom tilbake 1900, samme historie, og forsøkte igjen kl.21, men slapp ikke inn».

Valglokalene stengte kl. 2200. Studenter ble frustrerte. Ett sted var det registrert 5.000 studenter, og lokalet var ute av stand til å ta unna så mange.

Sinnet var stort blant de som ikke fikk stemt. De følte seg lurt.

Students said that part of the problem was that more than 5,000 students had been registered at a single polling station. Elizabeth Eele, 19, a physics and philosophy undergraduate at Sheffield University, said that students may have been unfairly treated because they were moved into a separate, longer queue. «[The presiding officer] said that people with children and older people should go first, but that means that students who queued for longer were not allowed to vote.»

Alice Meakin, 18, a pupil at Sheffield High School, was turned away despite turning up more than an hour before the polls closed. «At school we’ve had talks saying how it is really important that we should vote and now we can’t.»

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An estimated 500 people were turned away in Nick Clegg’s constituency of Sheffield Hallam as a large number of students and other voters descended on the polling station at St John’s Church in the Ranmoor district of the city. Police had to remove about 100 people who refused to leave.

A further 200 people in Woodseats, a suburb five miles away, were told that they could not cast their vote. Police were called to deal with 100 angry people who refused to leave the library being used as a polling station.

About 600 people were turned away in Chester, a key marginal where Labour was defending a majority of 915.

Police dispersed 300 people who were prevented from voting in Brockley in the Lewisham-Deptford constituency, southeast London. A sit-in was also broken up in Triangle Road in Hackney, East London.

Other polling stations in Newcastle East and Sutton Coldfield stayed open after 10pm to cope with demand. Electoral Commission rules state that votes can only be counted if ballot papers have been issued by the 10pm deadline. In Liverpool some polling stations were reported to have run out of ballot papers.
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A protester at Woodseats said he queued for two hours in the rain to be told that he could not vote. «It was utter chaos and no one seemed to know what they were doing. Everybody was understandably upset at missing out.»

More than 300 people were turned away from a polling station in a student area of Manchester. Dr Lawrence Green, 49, a senior research fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University, said that what happened was «absolutely disgraceful». He queued for 45 minutes but was turned away ten yards from the door of the Ladybarn community centre in Manchester Withington, where the Lib Dems had a notional majority of just over 500. «There were about 300 people behind me,» he said.

Kathy Murray, also at Manchester Withington, told the BBC that there was one person handing out ballot papers. «I’m disgusted! We live round the corner from the polling station. We went at 6pm. It was too busy we went back an hour later. There were still big queues. We went back at 9pm but still couldn’t vote. I estimate 200 were turned away.»

Reports from Liverpool said that polling stations there ran out of ballot papers.

Andrew Boff, the Conservative mayoral candidate for Hackney, said that the situation was «getting ugly» at a polling station in Dalston because only three staff were on hand to process votes.

In Highbury, in the London constituency of Islington South, about 40 people were already inside the polling station when they were told that they could not vote. Jim Burton, 36, said: «There was a bit of uproar. People were very animiated and then after about ten minutes the police arrived to make sure that things were not getting out of hand.»

Voters declare their anger as thousands are turned back at polling station door