To think that your vote isn't actually secret?

[hellooooooomama]

Everyone has voted by now so hopefully won't put anyone off.

I watched very carefully while voting today. There is a number next to your name on a list, they write that number on a sheet next to the number of the ballot paper they give you.

How the hell is that a secret vote?!

Piffpaffpoff, Fleurdelise, you have never heard the old Northern Irish saying at election time?

"Vote early, vote often"

When I did polling clerk work the ID thing was always a pain. A few examples

"Can I use my Kays Catalogue paying in book?" - NO

"Can I use my PSV licence?" - NO

"She is my wife" - Don't care

As a PP pointed out, the system would allow "them" to check back to all the people who voted for a particular party, which wouldn't be so very onerous, as you'd just (small) check the pile of (say) Green votes, and look up the numbers on the lists.

Ok, daft question. How do you become a polling Clark or presiding officer? Do you work for the council doing an other job the rest of the time?

The only reason pencils are offered to use as a vote marker is so a voter can correct their mistake if they wanted

The reason is actually because it is cheaper for councils to provide pencils than pens. You can use your own pens, crayons, whatever to mark to ballot paper.

I wish the count was done by machine however having spent from 10pm last night till 7 am this morning counting ballot papers by hand over and over again I can you tell you it's not. It's so regimented everything has to be done correctly with no errors otherwise you have to count it out all again. Plus you are being watched by election agents other election staff and security. Plus the last thing on my mind last night was rubbing out all the crosses to try and alter the vote

Postal votes were open first at the count I did last night and then they had to be verified before you could start counting

Wayfarersonbaby thanks for your two posts! they cleared up something that was puzzling me about voter information.

About 5 minutes after I got back from voting yesterday the doorbell rang and it was a canvasser. They asked for DH by name. I said he was busy, what did they want? (I was talking to her over an intercom, we live in a flat).

She said she was canvassing on behalf of X Party and had DH voted yet? I thought that was an odd question, and possibly slightly sexist as she didn't ask if I had voted. I just said that we had both voted and put the intercom down, but it left me slightly troubled.

I started to ponder if they had access to the lists showing those who had voted that day and who hadn't - but they would have been remarkably quick off the mark as I had voted less than 10 minutes previously (polling station 3 minutes walk from my flat).

I didn't realise that the electoral shows the fact that you have voted in previous elections or not

DH is not a British national, although has Indefinite Leave to Remain status so has the right to vote here. However, and much to my annoyance and slight shame, he has only ever voted once and that was in the EU Referendum. I, however, vote every time.

So I guess she probably didn't want to bother talking to me as it was already gone 9pm and she guessed that I had probably already cast my vote! I think she was hoping to get DH up off his butt and down to the polling station to vote for her candidate.

All this stuff around voter profiling is going to be much harder in future elections. Data protection law changes next year with the advent of the General Data Protection Regulation. No one will be able to profile/ wealth screen/ whatever screen without explicit written consent.

The number list and the marked register of electors are sealed at the end of the poll. Candidates are entitled to see the register following the count but the number list can only be opened by order of a judge and then only in very specific circumstances (e.g. investigation into electoral fraud).

Ok, daft question. How do you become a polling Clark or presiding officer? Do you work for the council doing an other job the rest of the time?

Tends to be word-of-mouth round our way - most people who do it have done it for years, so when someone gives it up or can't make it that year you just ask someone you know. You don't have to work for the council to do it, but it's easier as the council must give you (paid) special leave to attend the polling station (unless there's good reason not to like care staff, for example) - other employers don't have to do that.

Thank you josh. interesting. Don't think I could do it, but am very grateful to those that do.

I work for a Council in the planning department. Out of my team of seven, four were manning polling stations yesterday. The other three of us were doing our regular jobs and manning the phones. Not all polling staff are council officers though. I don't know where they found the others, but a lot of them are regulars.

It's a 15 hour shift while the station is open, plus an hour or so either end to get set up and closed down. Including complying with all the many rules about protecting the integrity of the vote. So be nice to them!

wayfarers how does the electoral roll list know if you have voted? If the electoral list at the polling station is taken away and sealed, how would the electoral roll ever get marked with whether you have voted or not?

I also counted last night, for the first time. I was surprised and pleased (in terms of transparency) at the constant scrutiny and questioning from the counting agents and other representatives. They weren't allowed behind us, they had to be on the other side of the table facing us.
Each table had a postal vote box on it; we verified the number in here first. Then as the station boxes came in we did the same for them. Basically counting to 20 over and over and over. When this was done we sorted the ballots by candidate. Then we counted the ballots for each candidate.
We declared 90 minutes earlier than expected.

Local campaigners for all parties always have tales of voters who promise to vote for every party - and get multiple cars arriving for them from every party, ready to take them to the polling station late on election day!
My great grandma used to promise to vote conservative in the 1970s to get a lift to the polling station and then vote labour. The conservatives had more comfortable cars

@ClarkWGriswold I read a thing about exit polls yesterday, think it was on the FT's website. It said that exit polls are done in key constituencies around the country - think it was 144 this year - basically, those ones full of swingers where they can track change. They ask people leaving polling stations to mark a second ballot paper with how they have voted so it's not just someone asking you 'who did you vote for?'

They are getting better and better at analysing the data and working out where the need to do these things, and have predicted the last 25 years' elections pretty bang on as the ITN (who developed the first exit poll) and BBC now pool their resources.

It's not because they manage to somehow open the ballot boxes and cross check millions of votes in time for 10pm!

Sorry, meant to put that the second ballot paper is marked secretly and put into a ballot box, so people are more likely to be honest about marking who they actually voted for

In the world we live in running such a labour-intensive illegal scheme as tracing the people who voted Green or BNP would be impossible to keep secret.

But since 1872 when the secret ballot began no court has ever authorised any such trace, so for the peace of mind of the paranoid let's stop recording which voter gets which ballot paper.

Incidentally: if it was done illegally how would anyone feel about a pretext being found to sack a BNP-voting police or prison or immigration officer?

The marked register is definitely available after the election (some time afterwards I think) -- see page 17 below:
www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/57931/Part-H-Access-and-supply-November-2012.pdf

LondonHuffyPuffy they may well have known you voted. Did you give your polling number to the "tellers" sitting outside the polling station? (They will have party rosettes on.) What the tellers do is record your polling number on tear-off sheets, and then every 1-2 hours they will take the numbers back to the local "committee room" where the local party's polling day operation is being held. (Sometimes this transfer may be done by "runners" (for a very local committee room), or by phone to one further away. (In a local election a party may run a committee room only a minute or so from the polling station.

Then what the local party volunteers do is check the numbers on their pads against their list of local party "promises" (people who have said during canvassing they will vote for the party.) They will have lots of other volunteers out on the streets knocking up any of the promises that haven't yet voted. This system used to be run on paper sheets when it was invented decades ago, but now it's done on a computer program called something like "Polling Day". That means that the tellers will run or telephone in their sheets of polling card numbers, then a volunteer will type them into a database and the system will then generate a list of voters still to vote by road in the local area so the people knocking up can get round there. In a small polling district that can happen really quickly, especially if you live near the polling station! And it gets quicker as the night goes on since there are fewer "promises" left outstanding.

This kind of operation can make a big difference in a marginal election as you can get your party's vote out really quickly to increase your turnout, and if you have enough volunteers on the street and a quick system of running the numbers in it can be very well co-ordinated! So my guess is they called in your polling number and checked it off their list and someone in the committee room then noticed your DH hadn't yet voted and told someone else already on the street to knock him up.

You don't have to give your polling card number to the party "tellers" - and it's fine for them to ask as long as they don't impede your way into the polling station - but if you do it is helpful to them and definitely to you if you are a party supporter as then you won't get a knock-up. (The numbers are only used on the day and to be honest are a bit haphazard sometimes as not everyone gives their number, lots of people have forgotten their polling cards and at busy times some voters will go in while you're busy!)

It can be a really amazing tool if you're an election wonk, as you can do amazing stuff on the day like seeing where your turnout is street by street and whether your party turnout is higher than the average overall turnout and so on. At least, that's the kind of minute wonky detail that gets canvassers and local politicians very excited indeed I've run a polling day operation and it is great fun, even if your candidate doesn't win.

My great grandma used to promise to vote conservative in the 1970s to get a lift to the polling station and then vote labour. The conservatives had more comfortable cars

fantastic I'm going to do that when I'm old

Just to be clear, the information you voluntarily give to the "tellers" outside the station is entirely separate to any information on the inside of the polling station, including the marked register which is only available later on. And of course they don't know what you actually voted - they just assume if you gave them a "promise" that your vote was in fact for them!

Oh and this is a good summary of how the election day process works, with all the tellers and so on, from the local parties' perspective:

www.howtowinelections.co.uk/electionday.shtml

im more worried about the fact at no point do you have to show id and the fact that voting my post exists imagine if you live in an abusive household do you think you could have a free postal vote in that situation

I'm a vote counter, there is no way there would ever be time to check who voted for which party, and as previous posters have said the 'overseers' of the process are lovely but there are very strict rules

Yes in theory it could be looked up after the vote, but it really wouldn't be done!

Also at my count loads of people had voted in pen, or big black marker, there really is no need, there was no way those things were getting rubbed out

At the Scottish Referedum, one voter made a big show of this fancy pen he'd bought specially to mark his vote 'to make sure it counted' and how it was going to become an historic pen in his family, having made its mark on history blah blah blah...

I expect it's just languishing in a drawer now.

im more worried about the fact at no point do you have to show id

The counter argument is that if you required photo ID it would disenfranchise large numbers of poorer people who don't have any form of photo ID. Plenty of the clients I've worked with don't have a passport or driving license as they can't drive and can't afford a holiday abroad, many don't have anything like a gas bill to prove address as they were on a prepaid meter.

Any attempt to bring in ID requirements would disproportionately effect them and potentially skew the election results.