Don't Rob Us of Our Portillo Moments ; As Westcountry Councils Consider Delaying Counting General Election Votes Until the Next Day, Conservativehome's Jonathan Isaby Says It Would Be Bad for Democracy If the Region's Crunch Results Weren't Known for 24 Hours

Summary

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W ERE you still up for that dramatic moment when Michael Portillo lost his seat at the 1997 General Election? I was. And I vividly remember watching the declaration from Enfield Southgate live on TV. I'm sure many of you do too, as watching the election results coming in is a ritual for millions of families up and down the country: it directly links our own trip to the polling station earlier in the day with the decision being made by the nation as a whole as to which set of politicians is going to govern us for the next four or five years.

But the future of election night is now in serious doubt, with returning officers up and down the country threatening to go home to bed at 10pm at the next General Election and leaving what they appear to view as the minor matter of finding out who won until the following day. At a stroke, decades of tradition would go out of the window and we would all lose out.

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Extract

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Don't Rob Us of Our Portillo Moments ; As Westcountry Councils Consider Delaying Counting General Election Votes Until the Next Day, Conservativehome's Jonathan Isaby Says It Would Be Bad for Democracy If the Region's Crunch Results Weren't Known for 24 Hours

Last week I founded the Save General Election Night campaign through the social networking website Facebook, along with fellow bloggers from across the political spectrum.

Ours is a genuine cross-party campaign which now has thousan...

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