Election Night - an undramatic, excessive expense?

Now that attention is turning to the need for spending cuts great and small, I'd like to take the chance to pounce on one area of expenditure that is admittedly small in itself but which got the blogosphere so worked up earlier this year - Election Night.

We were told that it was a horror that "penny pinching councils" were considering - SHOCK! - counting the votes the next day. It was ghastly that they were prepared to not spend extra on staff and room hire to count the votes in the middle of the night so that we could get a result in the small hours of the morning. It might even have led to the end of democracy in this country and the collapse of civilisation because a formal change of government might not happen by lunchtime. And we might not get the fun of a "Portillo moment" for most of the country to rejoice about.

Well the actual result meant it took five days for a change of government, but from where I'm sitting civilisation hasn't collapsed and we're still a democracy. And as for "Portillo moments", most of the country were not rejoicing when Michael Portillo lost his seat in 1997. Most of the country were in bed.

And let's be honest - the 2010 election contained very few results that could be considered a "Portillo Moment" and even when the outcome fits that, the declaration wasn't remotely as dramatic. For instance here's the Belfast East result where Peter Robinson lost his seat:
It's hardly the most dramatic declaration going is it?

Was the extra money spent on overnight counts really necessary to give political junkies some excitement? I frankly don't think it was. There are other areas of the election where frankly more money was needed - more staff, better venues for polling places and a better communications system would probably have dealt with the horrendous queues and allowed more people to actually cast their vote. (See "More money for electoral administration!" or "Fewer elections at the same time!"?) That would have been worthy extra spending for democracy. Overnight counts were not.

It was also galling, though not surprising, that in the run-up to the general election Parliament passed legislation to force local councils into holding overnight counts in all but the most mitigating circumstances. This legislation was passed by and cheered by many people who claim to believe in "localism". Often it seems that "localism" does not extend to local councils.

For 2015 let's go the other way. Remove the legal requirements on councils to focus everything on having an overnight count and encourage (not force) them to count on Friday daytime. The priority in election spending should be in getting efficiency, not wasting public money for a few people's excitement. If "Election Night" has to be replaced by "Results Day", so be it.

I'd be prepared to pay more tax for this...

Whilst I think there is far, far too much waste in public spending and that the money can be better spent on more efficient and higher quality services, as shown by some councils (A Tale Of Two Councils - or Why I Wish I Had Hammersmith & Fulham Council), I also have limited faith in Labour to achieve this. So until the next election the choice is between higher taxes and serious lapses in what's needed. That's the honest truth - expecting Gordon Brown to discover efficiency after nearly ten years is like expecting Ruth Kelly to be a true believer in equality.

Nowhere is this deficit in provision clearer than in the current crisis of limited prison numbers. Even paedophiles are being kept out of jails because of it. (BBC News: Full jails change child porn term) This is simply unacceptable.

If in the short term I have to pay an extra penny or two in income tax or another 2 1/2 % VAT to finance new prison places (and specifically this - I don't want it flooding into the general pot to be wasted in traditional Gordon Brown style) then that's a price worth paying until we can get a government that will sort out the finances properly. Dogma about low taxation doesn't do diddly squat in a situation such as we have now.

But let's be honest - New Labour doesn't work that way. It sees any increase in tax as an opportunity for waste, for pointless jobs, for new administrators to set targets and massage the figures to meet them. Meanwhile it's the public who are at risk.