Please note that this piece was first published on the PSA Blog on 06 May 2015, and is available here.
By Alistair Clark
As the polls close and everyone settles down to watch election night on TV, spare a thought for the many thousands of election administrators who run polling day and the count afterwards. They are in many ways the ‘unsung heroes’ of our elections process; working hard, under considerable scrutiny and pressure to deliver an accurate and reliable result. Election day is long. Polls open at 7am, but the polling station workers are there an hour before to set the polling station up, before working all day until closing time at 10pm. The count won’t finish until well into the morning, and for those 279 councils also running local elections, often not until the following day.