Hi ladies. I would like to thank you for your informative postings. I am English, living in England and have no vote, but I am hoping you stay in the fold. We are so much more than the sum of our parts, and it is a very tough world out there.
I wanted to say something about the administration of the vote, as it seems to be causing a bit of worry. If it is run in the same way as elections in England, and I would have thought that it would be, the voting stations will be run by local authority staff. The count is also largely run by local authority staff, although there may well be others, especially as such a large turnout is expected. I have been involved in many elections and have been in charge of voting stations as well as being involved in the count, so this is all from my experience, albeit from some years ago.
At the voting stations, there will be a person in charge who has to ensure that everything is dealt with properly. So, no-one will be able to ask you what you are voting or try to persuade you in any way how to vote. Everything is set up so that you can vote in private. Only one person is allowed in a voting booth at a time.
Only those who are employed to man the station and those voting or queuing up to vote can be in the station. As soon as you have voted, you have to leave. In local/general elections, I have sometimes seen candidates pop in to thank the staff for manning the stations, but they have to be in and out and not try to engage with people waiting to vote.
From what I recall, supporters of each side (tellers) may not stand immediately outside the door, but they can stand a little way off. They should not be trying to persuade you to vote one way or another. In fact, I'm fairly sure that they should not speak to you at all on your way into the station, but can ask you to identify yourself on the way out. The reason they do this is because they may have an idea who has said they will vote for them and, towards the end of the day, if they can see from their records that those people have not yet voted, they may go and try to round them up. I recall having to remind tellers not to try to speak to people on the way in on a couple of occasions, but it was never a real problem. they should all know the rules.
I fail to see how a count can be fixed. There are counters and then supervisors who watch the counters count. If a cross isn't exactly in a box or there is any other reason why the paper is unclear, these ballots are taken to a central table and the returning officer and a representative from each side will agree what is to be done with those papers - whether they are a yes, no or spoilt.
Postal votes are not opened before the count. They are opened at the same venue as the votes are counted and under the same scrutiny, so I cannot see that anyone has been able to count postal votes at this stage.
I hope this is reassuring to all sides. I also hope it all goes smoothly and we can all be friends afterwards.