Millions head to polls to cast their votes in general election – live | General election 2024

More readers have been getting in touch … and some who are living abroad have shared with us the lengths they’ve gone to ensure their vote is counted today.

Lawrence Cheung, 62, who lives in France but is voting in the Cities of London and Westminster constituency, said that he entrusted his voting envelope to a Londoner who was returning on the Eurostar from the Gare du Nord, in Paris this morning.

Cheung did so after his postal vote arrived too late – an issue that the Guardian has been reporting on this week.

“I found a man who was a lone traveller with a simple backpack. He confirmed he was a Londoner who lives close to the City. As he understood what was at stake, it didn’t take much persuasion.

“I received my polling documents yesterday, which was insufficient time for returning by post, even from within the UK. Thankfully, the postal vote can be deposited at any polling station within the constituency.”

Cheung’s volunteer delivered the envelope in the Barbican this afternoon. “It turns out that his name is Moritz, and I cannot thank him enough.”

Andrew Murphy, 63, is one of many Britons living abroad who regained the lifelong right to vote this year after the 15-year rule ended. Remembering that his postal vote hadn’t arrived in time in the past, Murphy, who works for the European Commission and lives in Waterloo, Belgium, wasn’t leaving anything to chance: he decided to take the Eurostar in order to cast his vote in person.

“In the past (until 2005, when I lost the right to vote) I had a postal vote but the papers were never sent early enough to be counted. This way, they won’t be depriving me of my democratic right – I’ve turned up in person,” he said, explaining that he then travelled from London to Bristol to vote in the Filton and Bradley Stoke constituency.

“They kept sending me reminders to get the postal vote – but I thought, I’m not falling for that again!”

Murphy, who is from Liverpool, didn’t have anyone in his constituency that could easily vote for him by proxy. He was determined to vote, particularly after he was deprived of the right during the 2016 referendum. “It’s the first time I’ve been able to vote since the EU referendum, so it’s quite symbolic.

“It was expensive – but I’d probably have walked here, for this particular one.”

Other readers have expressed anger at not being able to vote at all.

Despite applying for her postal vote on 25 May, Sarah, who lives in Copenhagen but votes in Orpington, said she only received her postal vote on 3 July, leaving her unable to vote.

She explained that the options available to her were impractical – couriering it for same-day delivery would be extortionately expensive.“Or I could ask my boss for permission to take an unplanned, last-minute day off in a busy season so I can fly to the UK and deliver it myself. Both options are unaffordable and terrible for the environment,” she said, adding that she also had young children and childcare would be a problem.

“It’s a democratic right, it’s not some company delivering a bikini I’d ordered. I’m cross – I really wanted to vote.”

Lisa O’Carroll

The body that represents electoral officers and administrators has said electoral legislation is no longer adequate, amid widespread reports of disfranchisement of postal voters marring Thursday’s general election.

The Association of Electoral Administrators says pressure on running the services has mounted over recent years, with elections delivered “in spite of rather than because of the fragmented framework of laws”.

It has called for sweeping reforms including a new timeline for postal votes, registration of candidates and powers for officers to investigate errors and reports of disfranchisement when they occur.

Laura Lock, the deputy chief executive of the AEA, said: “Election teams are doing their very best to run this snap election, but with a short timetable and an election held when many are on holiday – plus print and delivery suppliers working at capacity – demand has severely tested the system.”

Lock said earlier deadlines for absent voting applications would be “better” and help councils get voting packs posted earlier, including those overseas.

Under existing laws, elections can be called a minimum of 25 days before polling day. The AEA says this is too tight and should be extended to 30 days as is the case for the London mayoral and Greater London authority elections.

It also wants powers to intervene when needed to avert disfranchisement, allowing those who did not receive a postal vote the opportunity to get a friend, family member or trusted person to cast their vote on election day.

The number of people seeking postal votes has rocketed in recent years, with 10 million this year and 8 million in 2019 compared with 1.7 million in 2010 and about 1 million in the decades stretching back to the 1970s.

Data from the House of Commons shows the “turnout” of postal voters is exceptionally high, at more than 83% in the past four elections, representing 20% of the total number of valid votes cast.

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

In her column today Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett has come out batting for greeting a possible Labour victory with some enthusiasm. Here’s a taster:

If they had reservations about the Blair government, my parents kept them to themselves. My mother, who had never trusted Blair, certainly didn’t allow it to temper her joy that morning. Both my parents are socialists, voters the modern Labour party would regard as being on the far left – people whose votes, perhaps, they feel they could even do without. Both, like so many Labour voters, would later be disgusted over Iraq. Yet they knew then what I also know now in my bones, which is that people’s lives would be improved by a Labour government, even if it wasn’t quite the kind of Labour government you had dreamed of.

I saw my mother the other day, and we talked a bit about 1997. “Our lives,” she said, “would have been materially different under a Conservative government.” A year after the Labour victory, we would become a single parent family. We would struggle financially, but not as much as we would have done under the Tories. The support we received from the local authority as a result of my brother’s severe disability was life changing.

On social media, people have been sharing the images that they feel sum up the last decade and a half of government, from the Johnson administration’s pandemic parties to security tags on blocks of cheese, the Covid memorial wall, Grenfell Tower in flames. One person chose a screenshot of the gaunt little boy from the Channel 4 Dispatches documentary about child poverty, the haunting part where he says: “We try not to eat a lot in one day, even though most of us are really hungry.” Could you look him in the face and say that life won’t be any different for him and children like him under a Labour government? I couldn’t. It has to be.

Read more from Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett here: Pop the champagne, dance for your kids – if Labour wins, I’ll be celebrating like my parents in 1997

Alfie Packham

It is not a UK election day without numerous pictures of dogs at polling stations. So here are a few more from Guardian readers …

Emma Towers, who voted in the Southgate and Wood Green constituency, was joined by Freckles and Bugsy, who were bribed with treats to sit for this photo.

Philip Mountford, accompanied by Blossom the cockapoo, did a proxy vote for his daughter Hope, who is travelling around South East Asia and is now in Australia.

He said queues had already formed before 7am at the Bishops Cleeve Tithe Barn polling station in the Tewkesbury constituency.

Andrew Cleland, Cambridge was up early to vote with his Siberian Huskies, Reto and his son, Bruno. “Despite almost four years’ age difference, this is both of their first general elections. They feel ‘cakeism’ is an ideology worthy of further research.”

And one more from Gerry McLean, Camden Square, London. “It was as busy as I’ve ever seen a polling station, but it was very efficiently run,” he says. “I thought you might be short of pictures of dogs, so here is Camilla outside the London Irish Centre.”

• You can tell us what is happening where you are on polling day – and send a picture of your dog too – details of how to contact the team can be found here. We will also accept photos of more exotic animals out voting.

Alexandra Topping

An interesting polling day ding dong going on below the line at The Times this morning. There is disgruntlement among readers, who are less than happy that comments on its election leader – which grumpily sat on the fence and failed to endorse any party – have been switched off.

The Murdoch-owned Times stopped short of endorsing Labour when it finally published its final editorial before the election at 8.30pm last night – some hour’s after Starmer won the support of its stablemate the Sun – instead providing its readers with the resounding message of “Don’t know, really”.

After attesting that the Tories were dealt a bad hand, it adds that there were “many unforced errors” and acknowledges that “after 14 years in power there is much baggage.” It describes Starmer as “a sensible man, flexible and pragmatic, a patriot committed to his country’s defence” but says there are “warning signs” about a Labour government including “a disdain for aspiration” shown in its decision to close a loophole that exempts private schools from VAT and “Labour’s attitude to Trans rights”.

After some umming and ahhing it decides: “This newspaper wants the next government to succeed, and it will not be ungenerous in praise if that is the case. But Labour has yet to earn the trust of the British people. It has been sparing with the truth about what it will do in office and cannot ­expect an endorsement.”

Some of its readers were not best pleased. Initial comments under the leader included criticism of its editor Tony Gallagher, former editor of the Daily Telegraph and the Sun (with a little stint as deputy editor of the Mail in between). “Gallgher has penned a very long resignation letter,” wrote one reader. “Once the election is over would The Times consider getting a proper Editor back in?,” asked another.

Then, the comments were inexplicably switched off. Wily readers, determined to have their say, instead took to the comments section of the paper’s second leader, which carried the headline “We the People”, and argued that politicians needed to reconnect with the people they are paid to represent.

“And we, the readers of the Times, petition the editor to reconnect with the readership of this paper and its once vigorous independent-minded ethos,” wrote one reader. “So the Thunderer deems it necessary to switch off comments on its non-endorsement leader, after a stream of adverse comments. A leader, in which it fears for the freedom of the media. Hypocrites!,” added another.

Reader John Ness also reflected on the Times’ nickname of the Thunderer, established – according to the paper – in 1830.

“The irony is painful,” he wrote. “The Times election leader dithers and mumbles and then bravely decides to sit on the fence and then acts decisively to ban comments so that readers cannot point it out. It is election day but it is the date that the Thunderer became the Whimperer.”

Jessica Murray

In what must be one of the most unusual – and smallest – polling stations in the country, in the remote village of Winwick in Northamptonshire people will be casting their vote in the hallway of someone’s house.

But even though the ballot box is literally under her own staircase, 80-year-old June Thomas said she always casts her ballot by postal vote. She has already walked the 300 yards to the village post box to send her vote in.

She told the BBC: “I don’t think I’ve ever voted in my house – even though it’s the polling station. I can see why people might laugh.”

Her home, the Old School House which was the village school until 1947, has been the polling station for the area since 1990, and is one of only a few remaining private residences still used as polling stations across the country.

Thomas said she started voting by post as she previously worked as a polling station clerk elsewhere and didn’t have time to cast her vote in person – and has remained doing so ever since.

“I know it sounds funny but I’ve just kept using my postal vote and voting by post,” she said.