There have been numerous reports of EU citizens being turned away from polling stations today despite having supposedly completed their two-stage registrations for it correctly. There’s plenty of noise on Twitter about it although it’s not clear yet how widespread the problem actually is…

Either way the blame game has already started in earnest, with people variously pointing fingers at the Government, local councils, the Electoral Commission, loopy Ed Davey has even accused the Tories of “deliberately” engineering a “bureaucratic shambles”. It’s pretty obvious to anyone watching the Tories recently that they’re too shambolic deliberately engineer a bureaucratic shambles if they tried…

The Electoral Commission themselves are trying to blame the Government for the “very short notice” they gave them of the elections. While the Government were officially still in denial until earlier this month, what the Electoral Commission seem to have forgotten is that David Lidington actually gave them official instruction to start preparing for the EU elections seven and a half weeks ago on 1st April. Which is longer than they had to prepare for the 2017 snap General Election…

Judging from most of the reports from EU citizens online, the fault appears to lie largely at local council level – EU citizens have been told they can vote by their local councils but clerical errors mean that databases have not been updated, despite councils having had 12 days to do so. The Guy Newsroom can confirm from personal experience the levels of sheer unbridled incompetence at many local councils’ electoral departments. Trying to blame Brexit is a bit rich when exactly the same problems were reported five years ago, five years in which councils have still failed to get their acts together…