So those people sitting outside the Polling station...

Where I live has voted for the same party since I was 3 (a lot of years ago) so I’ve never seen a teller outside. There’s zero point.

The only time I ever saw one was when I worked at a polling station at an election.

What you are describing sounds serious - I do not believe your 'DD's friend's DM' would be so lax as to not report such a thing if they saw it.

I don't believe it. Parties issue very strict advice about postal votes now for obvious reasons.

As for 'lying about opposing candidates' - what type of lying? Because all parties present their opponents in a bad light, that is par for the course.

Their candidate lives 30 miles away where they are a councillor in a different county!

Same with our constituency: two of the candidates have been parachuted in from London (we're in the Midlands) and a third is from the same county, but nowhere near our town.

It should be such an obvious, basic rule that anybody wishing to represent a constituency should have lived there continuously for at least five years. Can anybody tell me why it could possibly not be better to have somebody who knows the local area than somebody who has probably never even been there?

The fact that no government has ever seriously proposed a vote to make this a standard, fundamental law in parliamentary representation tells you a very great deal about how much they actually wish to serve us, rather than themselves.

@bergamotorange the local LibDems will stoop to anything. They are notorious! They have been in trouble a few times for lying about opposing candidates.

They don't expect, they ask.

You can't have a democracy without political activism.

If parties are targetting they often do not send tellers to areas they know are utterly one party. It is a waste of resource.

Some areas have limited political activism of any type, really. Although this election I suspect many areas are more active than 2019 or 2017 as the Lib Dems will be fighting more rural areas and Labour is looking further down the list than usual.

@AmelieTaylor I've never seen anything like you describe at a polling station and this is not how we are instructed to act. Are you sure it wasn't an poll clerk? I was also asked as I went in by poll clerk today if I had my ID with me, although not aggressively. The party reps usually are a bit further back and will typically wear some kind of rosette or t-shirt to identify which party they represent. If it was a party rep then you should report it to the local party.

I've never encountered one, and never heard of the 'teller' thing before, and I've voted several times.

It did annoy me this morning.. I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about the political system but it was only thanks to the posts on here yesterday that I realised why the person was there.

The woman at my polling station this morning was sitting just outside the door, no rosette, and simply asked for my polling card - she very much gave the impression that she was just part of the official team and was checking my polling card for some legal reason e.g. see that I had come to the right place.

I gave her the card, I am not a confrontational person and didn't want to be seen to be arguing with an octogenarian, but I didn't like the duplicity of it.

This sounds like bollocks. This is a very serious allegation, your 'DD's friend's DM' has a legal responsibility to report any potential illegality around postal voting if they witnessed it - but I suspect what they actually saw was not what you describe.

I am absolutely not insulting anyone, but I am genuinely surprised by two things - firstly that some people didn't know about tellers and that you don't have to speak to them and secondly that some people have never seen them.
I've voted in every general election for the past 38 years in various different places and there have always been tellers at every polling station I've been to. I used to accompany my parents to the polling station as a child and used to cringe as my Dad lectured the tellers at his polling station about his right not to speak to them and then proceeded to stand there for a good half an hour telling everyone who came out that they shouldn't speak to them either.

He's within his rights to ask, and you are within your rights to either answer or decline to answer. How you vote is treated as confidential my those administering the vote - but you are allowed to tell people. Many people advertise their voting behaviour - my neighbour has a poster in their window so I am pretty sure how they are voting. Political parties obviously ask people how theya re voting, in order to identify their supporters.

There is no need to get wound up about it - your posts are coming across as if this has troubled you but there is nothing to worry about.

If you are a supporter of a party and want to help them out, it is useful to tell them you voted as they can cross you off their list. This then means that by about 3pm they start to get an idea of which areas they are winning easily, which are tight and which are no hope.

Then they use this info to target their activists in the afternoon/evening to help them win as many seats as possible.

Honestly - they CANNOT tell how you’re voting. So much anger on here.

If you want to get in a stew, then postal voting is what needs regulating. The LibDems here were stomping round all the local nursing/care homes and ever so kindly helping residents to fill in their postal votes and send them off for them. Dd’s friend’s dm manages one - and she chucked ‘em out when she twigged.

My adhd brain went down a rabbit hole and I found a lot of guidance for political campaigns on the ICO website. Looks like it is a mixture of public task, legitimate interest and consent, but with fairly specific limitations around how the public task and legitimate interest bases can be used. I suspect an awful lot of campaigns are almost certainly in breach of GDPR tbh! But I have satisfied my curiosity for the time being!

But it's not informed consent, is it?

Suppose you were at parents' evening and a man in a suit with a clipboard at the door asked you whose mum you were - then maybe sought further info about your child - you would naturally assume that he was a teacher or admin staff and would answer.

However, if it later turned out that he was a nosey dad of another pupil, maybe trying to drum up business for his privately-run after-school activity; or worse, somebody with nefarious intent who had just gone and stood there to glean whatever 'useful' info he could... would you genuinely consider that he had had the actual informed consent of everybody who had given him the personal details that he asked them for?

They re-enacted a scam on The Real Hustle once, where a man in a hi-viz jacket, wearing a mocked-up badge in a lanyard and holding a clipboard, went over to people in a private car park as soon as they parked up. He told them that, unfortunately, the machines were out of action, so they needed to pay him directly and then he would (pretend to) mark their registration as 'paid' and give them a (worthless, fake) receipt. Of course, nobody questioned him and they just gave him money - with no inkling that he was nothing to do with the car park owner whatsoever, and that they would later receive a penalty charge notice for failing to pay.

Maybe people will say that people need to be more on their guard in scenarios like this; but wouldn't we hope that the representatives of a (supposedly) reputable political party would be above using confidence trickery to make people assume that they are an official and not who they actually are?

Ha ha yes I had the exactly the same thought - I could ask one but I bet they won’t know.

I wondered about public task too. But the data is primarily being used for the interests of a particular political party, rather than any real public interest.

I will have to wait for the next general election and ask them when they come round! What's the betting that they won't have a clue?!

OUrs was NOT obviously a member of a party. I am so annoyed I didn't realise this. I would have refused to give him my card.

You may well be right - I’m not sure if it’s ever been tested. Could be public task exception maybe? I’m an in house lawyer and deal with GDPR a bit in my job but I’m not an expert (clearly!)

But under GDPR, consent must be explicit. I have never given explicit consent to a canvasser for them to process or store my data, and they have never confirmed exactly how they will use this data.

To be clear, this is idle curiosity rather than concern. I f I didn't want them to use my data, I wouldn't give it to them, but I don't think they can just make that assumption under GDPR.

Good for him; but how shameful that, instead of being allowed to get on with their jobs, they have to warn people about the overbearing and intrusive behaviour of the candidates and their parties.

Indeed.

I thought your comparison was a very good one: regardless of what you're there to do or have just done, both of them are unsolicited third parties who just assume that they have a right to your time and information, without ever asking if you mind.

Also, they will both deliberately mislead you in some way - whether by trying to make you think that you need to get your application form for child benefit through them, or otherwise by withholding their identity and letting you make the very reasonable assumption that they are an electoral officer.

The ones outside mine didn’t even have a rosette just a smart suit. Pretty intimidating - demanded my polling card! Luckily I am savvy enough yo know that 1. You don’t need to take your polling card and 2. You don’t need to show it to anyone.
Should not be allowed.

I’ve voted many times in different cities and have never seen this! Don’t assume it’s universal

I'm always curious though about how the data that political parties collect from this kind of activity and from canvassing etc fits in with GDPR. What is the lawful basis for them holding the information that they hold - does anyone know?

Lawful basis for the processing is consent. They won’t keep it long (or shouldn’t!).