13/12/2019
Last night I was a counting assistant in the General Election. I have to say that whatever misgivings I, personally, may have about the continuing integrity of the Union, or the wisdom of turning our backs on our near-continental friends and putting our trust in trading with Trump, at least I am content that the electoral machinery is robust and sound. The result truly expresses the wish of the British people. So, I was very proud to be a small cog in the democratic mechanism.
It was all a bit of an eye-opener though. I turned up at the Abingdon Recreation Centre at 9.15 along with a couple of hundred other counting staff. There was a high-security presence and lots of ID checks, though I imagine this is all easier to contain at night when fewer people might be milling about. The airport-level concern stops as soon as you’ve got your little ‘counting staff’ wristband though.
This counting station was run by Vale of the White Horse and South Oxfordshire district councils – which are the same thing nowadays. So, there were four constituencies to count – from Wantage in the west, to Henley in the less-west. I was working on Henley voting slips. The small army of staff was dwarfed by the size of the counting hall, which normally houses five indoor tennis courts. This means it’s unheated. And all the ballot boxes come in through permanently open doors until midnight.
My little team comprised another Andrew and an older lady named Yvonne, who was initially a bit aggy-naggy about the fact we were moved from a relatively warm position in the centre of the hall to an area of arctic tundra near the open door and the massive windows. But she warmed and we were all best of friends by the end of the night. I had been completely unaware of the process, so here’s a little recap on what happened.
Boxes were shipped in from all corners of the region from 10pm onwards. The first task is to verify their contents. This is the longest process and was expected to take up until 2am, which it very nearly did. Each box is opened, and the contents tipped on the desk in front of the three of us. The task is simply to count the bits of paper (without worrying what’s written on them). Paper-clipping them into tens, and rubber-banding them into 100s. All the while being scrutinized by clipboard-bearing candidate’s agents, peering at what you’re doing at close range. The number the team comes up with is compared with the number reported by the polling station officer. If it’s not the same, then you’re simply told to check them all again. This is why verification takes so long. A little rubber thimble is the best, probably the only, way of picking up a single slip from a pile of them. I lost mine at one point and was completely handicapped.
We had a little break at 1.40am when verification was complete. We’d been given a bottle of water each, but now we were given a chocolatey oat bar and told to go upstairs to the warmth of the coffee bar and get something to eat and drink. Big TV screens up there heralding what was going on in the rest of the country but, do you know what, I wasn’t interested. The job-in-hand was to get our count done and correct.
Back in Iceland the scenery had changed slightly on our return. Now there were wire baskets with a candidate’s name on each one, and one marked ‘doubtful’.
Stage two is called Sorting. Now all the boxes have been validated we can forget the polling station and think about the constituency. So, once again, box contents are tipped on the table but now we sort them into their appropriate baskets, and anything dodgy goes in the doubtful pile. This is surprisingly difficult and we’re all nervous because each paper represents somebody’s intention, and a vote for the candidate. The agents are now peering at us very intently. But actually, this process only takes about an hour.
And the final stage is to count the votes. So, once again, we are gathering up piles of 10, then 100, then 1000. Lots of paper clips and rubber bands. But the number of votes, and spoiled papers, must equal the number we first thought of (in verification). And the process throws up lots of discovered errors in sorting. So, we all ended up counting, and counting, and counting again until it was dead right.
And finally, the bit we all see on TV, the results are announced, and the winner makes his or her speech. It’s interesting to see the stages being dismantled as they serve their purpose. Once the result is announced, there will be no recount. So, the paper clips and elastic bands we’ve painstaking put on the voting slips are stripped off. The slips will be archived (and presumably analysed) but their immediate task is over.
It turned out that I voted for the horse which came last in Wantage, but we’d been told to show neither pleasure nor displeasure at the result. And, as I say, the important thing for me was being a small part of this great machine to determine the will of the nation. I drove home at 6am.