Election night must be election results night

By Anthony Painter / @anthonypainter

ConservativeHome has begun a campaign to ensure that election night is election results night and local councils must not push the count into the following day following on from a piece in the Sunday Times. I absolutely endorse this campaign. I can not think of anything worse than predicting who has formed the next government on the basis of- usually inaccurate- exit polls.

Even if the exit polls were accurate on a national basis, they would still not predict the result in a close election so we may well not know the colour of the next government until well into the following day. Tom Harris and Liberal Democrat, Mark Pack have given the campaign their support so it is genuinely cross-party.

Jonathan Isaby explains his arguments here and there is also a Facebook group. But none of us will benefit from the recent changes that a number of local councils have made- for cost and convenience reasons- and that is just not good enough.

Election night is a central part of our democratic culture and so it should remain. Perhaps we can find some consensus on this?