Polling stations and pencil

[Symbollove]

Ok I am probably being odd, but why do polling stations have pencil to cast your vote, I don't like the idea of pencil can be rubbed off. Am not saying that will happen. But why not just have a pen? If I knew I would've taken a pen with me. Also the pencil I used was in dire need of sharpening, I went at 7.30am so not like an awful lot of people used it.
I can't remember if it's always been pencil but just occurred to me this morning when i voted

Puzzled

AN ENTIRE INDUSTRY DEDICATED TO ELECTION PARAPHANELIA!!!!!

Pencils!

Polling Booths!!!

Those signs say "POLLING STATION"!!!!!

Who knew???

I work at the polls and people ask this all the time. The answer is simply that they last forever. They can be ( and are ) boxed up and used again and again. Pens wouldn't last from one election to another and the cost to issue more every time, would be enormous.

The suggestion that "they could be rubbed out" is heard often too. The answer to that, is that security around elections is super tight. Nobody is left alone with ballots which could be altered. Ballots are counted as soon as the election is completed, then boxed up and sealed before being sent away in a secure vehicle. The idea of naughty people getting hold of them and altering them is ludicrous.

You can take a pen if you want to, and many people do. Or write in your own blood if it suits you - anything is fine as long as it's easily read by a very tired polling worker.

I still have a few odds and ends (i used to rescue them from the black bin sack at the end of the day).

You are a wumman after my own heart flouncy

Bit random, but I’m now imagining the amount of germs these ballot pencils are carrying, by the close of play tonight

The same could be said for door handles, escalator grips, lift buttons, supermarket trolley handles, money......

Just wash your hands before handling food (like you should anyway). The public doesnt become more germy just because it is voting!

Bit random, but I’m now imagining the amount of germs these ballot pencils are carrying, by the close of play tonight.

What about the germs on the door of the polling station, around the voting booth itself, on every surface of the buses and trains people take to work ....

Somehow I think we'll survive.

Superb user name Gnome!

Commenters on the Daily Mail are convinced voting is rigged because of the pencils.

No doubt they'll decide the reverse if the Conservatives/Brexit Party/other right wing parties do well.

AN ENTIRE INDUSTRY DEDICATED TO ELECTION PARAPHANELIA!!!!!

Fascinating!

I had a look but couldn't find the poor excuses for' polling booths' the use round here. The only cardboard ones were 49 quid and have sides and a top and space to vote underneath.

What we have looks like a cardboard box cut in half* through the corners, with the triangle of base at the bottom. Totally inadequate.

*perhaps it is?

I’m taking my own pencil later, with my own germs on it.

Pens wouldn't last from one election to another and the cost to issue more every time, would be enormous.

I dunno, I suspect that the voting paraphernalia will be needed again sooner rather than later!

Pens run out. Take your own if you think bad things will happen because of pencils. Those IKEA bastards trying to trick me with their pencils too

If they wanted to rig it they'd just spend the last five minutes marking up the surplus papers. 💁🏻‍♀️

Commenters on the Daily Mail are convinced voting is rigged because of the pencils.

Someone unfriended me and called me a nasty bitch on FB at the time of the Brexit vote because I pointed out the pencil/rigged/can be rubbed theory was rubbish .

write in your own blood

@Symbollove

I have been presiding officer at polling stations for many elections. There are precious few opportunities to get at ballot papers to "alter" them! The blank ballot paper is issued by the poll clerk and presiding officer together. The voter marks it and puts it into the ballot box which is in plain view and is sealed shut. At 1000pm the poll closes and the presiding officer and poll clerk seal the flap over the slot with a numbered security tag. The presiding officer then takes the box to a central point where it is put into a van and taken to the count. At the count the seal is checked and the box recorded. In due course it is opened and tipped out for the count.

Voters can use their own pens should they so wish

Interestingly our postal vote papers said they had to be completed in black pen. Cue mass excavation of the junk drawer to find one as all the bloody left around lidless ones we could find were, of course, blue.

Bit random, but I’m now imagining the amount of germs these ballot pencils are carrying, by the close of play tonight...hmm

This is exactly why I took my own pen, already had norovirus in the house last week so not taking any chances.

@MarySidney Pencils can be put away and brought out again at the next election. Pens will have dried up.

Not at the rate we've been having elections lately

"If you knew" you'd have taken a pen with you? Are you being serious? How can you use MumsNet and not see at least one of the million "they'll DEFINITELY change my pencil vote" conspiracy theorist posts?

Also how old are you? Have you never voted before? Make sure you understand things and how things work before you go!

Where does all the kit get stored between elections?

@MulticolourTriangles

When I worked for a local authority many years ago, we stored the ballot boxes in the basement of the council offices, along with boxes of pencils and so on. Polling booths were stored elsewhere, probably in another basement, by the Building and Works Department who put them up in the polling places.

Where does all the kit get stored between elections?

In a stationery cupboard in the Electoral Services department of your local council, probably.