Election fever

I voted at 2pm. One teller was dozing, the other, eating her sandwiches.
I was apparently the 17th person to appear.
A large bull was observing proceedings through the window.

You may draw conclusions about the rural nature of my constituency.

 

Or even the apathy that's part of Brit culture.

 

And the proportion that have therefore elected to vote by post.

 

I did my stint from 12 til 1pm and at times there were so many people
passing through the polling station even with three tellers it was hard
to keep up.

You may draw conclusions about the urban nature of my constituency.

 

Ha. We had quite a few of those turn up and deliver their postal vote in
person.

 

Funnily enough, I was chatting to the tellers about that, and it seems
that for our local area at least, the postal vote is low, many turn up
as much to chat as vote[1].

[1]possible grammatical car crash.

 

High turnout in Hove and Brighton(s) - 69%+

 

I've just been to vote on the way home from work, and it was by far the
busiest I've ever seen it in the polling station.

There's hope for people yet.

 

Drove past a polling station about an hour ago and there was a queue to
get in.

Indeed.

 

I've just been too - there was one other person voting. The other 5
locals probably went earlier.

 

Hey, even the cattle took notice!

 

Had to do that myself. Arguing with the ladies at the polling booth
proved fruitless as I should have phoned up last week when I suspected
it hadn't been delivered. A few choice words were uttered when I got
home to complain about my lost vote to find it had been carefully placed
in a very careful place by my wife.

At least I got to vote and I've learned a valuable lesson.

 

I've been doing the rounds of polling stations - checking on tellers etc.

That, and simply observing that many have queues out of the door.

 

Is that as unprecedented as the TV pundits are making out? It could lead
to some protests if the law hasn't been applied rigorously and
consistently.


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If it turns out to have been widespread and the results are inconclusive
might they have to rerun the whole election?

 

I'm pretty sure they just said on the BBC that the matter would be done on
a constituency basis i.e. the individual ballots would need to be legally
challenged. A national election can only be triggered on the whim of the
incumbent PM, which will be GB until he hands in his notice.

 

You may be misnoming, here. Tellers sit just outside the Polling
Station, checking who is voting and perhaps asking people who they
voted for, on behalf of political parties or candidates.

The people who are there all bloody day long, taking your Poll Card,
checking you off the register, giving you your voting paper and
accepting your vote - they aren't "tellers". They are the Presiding
Officer (grand title, eh?) and the Poll Clerk. I know this as I was
one of the mugs that sat there all bloody day for many years - on the
basis of a 'day off' and getting paid (apparently, on the face of it,
quite handsomely, but ultimately about a tenner an hour) for it.

I was PO for a Euro election in the mid 80s, in a rock solid Tory seat
on the edge of Exmoor. It was so foggy for the first three hours I
couldn't see my car from the door and we had zero voters: a Tory teller
turned up for ten minutes, got bored and fucked off. At ten o'clock I
washed my car, then polished it. Halfway through removing the old
stereo, another teller turned up and promptly went to sleep in the
lobby, lulled by the echoing zeds from my clerk who was stretched out
across our table, as she had been for over two hours.

By the time teller #2 woke up and wanted to vote so she could wobble
off home, I'd stripped out the old car stereo and fitted a new one,
complete with four speakers and new wiring throughout. That was the
first voter. We had lunch to celebrate and the my clerk decided she
would wash her car, so I watched her ;-)

By 9pm we'd had five tellers pass through, four of whom had voted,
eight actual non-affiliated voters who duly performed and one who
turned out to be at the wrong Polling Station! By close of play at
10pm a grand total of 17 people had voted, mainly together in a late
rush when the Conservative bloody candidate and his entourage turned up
when I was in the middle of close-of-play paperwork and
envelope-filling. And they had the cheek to get picky about the
station layout, to the extent that when I closed the station they were
still there. Busiest I'd been through all the 13 hours of opening.
See the Euro election turnout figures for APATHY.

I had two ponies and five sheep in the field adjacent that were totally
indifferent to the whole thing.

 

There's been queues before, but I cannot recall people being turned
away in any numbers. There's a protocol to be applied, but it only
involves a few people, and couldn't work with dozens, let alone
hundreds, especially if the Polling Station crew have been run off
their feet for the preceding hours.

The PO should take over the running of the Station singlehanded,
supervising what's going on and handing out papers, whereas his
clerk(s) should be going down the queue checking voters off and
approving them for issue of ballots (which cannot be issued until they
are inside the Station). The bottleneck is alweays the time it takes
for any given punter to shuffle into a booth, make their mark and
return the paper.

As to the shortage of papers, this is a major fuckup. All staff know
that they don't ever have sufficient papers for a big turnout and as
soon as they get a bit low tehre's a hotline number to be called. Not
when they're down to the last book of papers, but long before that.
Every station I've worked in has had a running turnout figure pencilled
on a bit of scrap paper, just for amusement. The Presiding Officer
should know very well when the bottom of the envelope of papers is
getting adjacent and should, in this case, have been on the blower a
long time before they evidently were. Inquiries will follow and there
are swords to be fallen upon.

 

Never get married?

 

48 from flat number 3a down the road?