Election night

Having done the job of poll clerk at the last District Council elections, I decided that this time, for the County and European elections, I would like to be a counting assistant to see the other side of the democratic process. I arrived at the South Holland Centre in Spalding just after 21.30 hrs and took my place at one of the tables. Nothing much happened until around 22.30 when the first of the ballot boxes started to arrive, and the first job was to verify the returns, in other words make sure that there were the number of voting slips in the box that the presiding officer had declared. I thought that this would be a mere formality before we got on to the real work of counting votes. Wrong. We finished verifying just after 03.00hrs! The counting itself was a much quicker process, that said, it was 05.30 hrs before I got home, too late to go to bed and be back in the office for 07,45, so I did a few jobs and was back in the office at 07.30.

I must say that unlike being a poll clerk, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and will definitely volunteer again, might be as soon as October, who knows!