Working it: Why staffing election counts is getting harder

Hello and welcome to Working It. 

I’m Bethan, Work and Careers deputy editor, standing in for Isabel, in a week of change for the UK. After a snap general election was called, six weeks of campaigning and a landslide Labour victory, we have a new government.

My colleagues here at the Financial Times are doing a fantastic job of covering what this means for work, from worker rights, to business investment, to the massive change for civil servants, staffers and MPs themselves as a new team of representatives arrives in parliament.

A conversation with a friend over the weekend, however, made me look at the election from a different angle. She’d volunteered to count votes in my London borough, so spent election night sifting through ballot papers, working out what local people wanted the next government to be.

I was intrigued to learn about this behind-the-scenes work — not least because my friend had had a lot of fun. Read on for more about what it takes to pull together a nationwide team of tens of thousands of people to count votes, staff polling stations, and do the administrative labour needed to make an election happen.

Get out the vote (counters)

“I wouldn’t say chaotic,” Peter Stanyon, chief executive of the Association of Electoral Administrators, tells me when I ask what it was like to manage this month’s election. “I’d say horrendous.”

Part of the challenge was recruiting the 140,000 polling station staff and 40,000 vote counters that Stanyon estimates were needed. And getting trusted staff to do the job is getting “tougher and tougher”. Although he stresses that counts for all 650 House of Commons constituencies were properly staffed, in many cases it was “to the bare bones” and involved creative measures — “proverbially twisting arms, saying how desperately we need staff” — to find enough people. “It’s certainly creaking at the edges.”

Part of the problem is demographics. Election volunteers — who are paid “something north of minimum wage” to greet people at polling stations and hand out the ballot papers, or to count votes overnight — tend to be older. Not enough young people are signing up to replace those who are retiring. Stanyon also thinks the job is getting harder, thanks in part to new in-person ID requirements for those eligible to vote.

Nationally, the Electoral Commission is thinking about ways to “fill the void”, says Stanyon, including inventive paths to get election administration “into the public psyche”. Buzzy TikTok videos have targeted young people, although he warns some unofficial content underestimates the work involved.

Widening the recruitment pool of election overseers isn’t simple, though. The first requirement of the job, apart from being able to count, is impartiality and trustworthiness, so vetting needs to be tight. In the UK — as is common globally — it is forbidden for administrators to have assisted candidates running for office.

Locally, the people officially responsible for getting everything in order, usually across several constituencies in an area, are returning officers. They are personally liable for the conduct of elections in their area — an anxiety-inducing quirk of a UK system also renowned for election overseers decked out in flamboyant feathered hats, lace ruffles and robes.

One is Mark Heath, who was an acting returning officer for this election and oversaw two Southampton constituencies, and employed about 300 polling booth attendants and 200 vote counters this election — “all people I trust”. Though easier than expected, recruitment “was a struggle”, he says, especially when 12 polling station volunteers dropped out at the last minute.

Heath describes his band of volunteers as a “mix of people, robust, reliable, good citizens”. Most had staffed elections before. A lot, he says delicately, are “in their golden age”, though this year he made a point of searching polling stations to identify young talent to be trained as the “next generation” of officers. Banks used to be a source of volunteers who were “very fast and slick at counting bits of paper” but digitisation has put an end to that. Local authorities, where there are informal and formal traditions of staff helping out, are now a main recruitment pipeline. But Heath fears even here public spiritedness may be waning. 

This is not just a problem in the UK. This year, about 70 countries will hold elections. Julia Brothers, deputy elections director at the US-based National Democratic Institute, tells me all have different approaches to staff recruitment. Some rely on council workers or teachers, others on volunteers with a sense of civic responsibility, others, like Mexico, on a lottery system.

Interestingly, though, Brothers isn’t too worried about the individuals selected to count votes. What really matters is things like transparency, training and “foolproof” checks and balances. “It’s more about the systems than the people,” she says. “If you have a good and transparent system in place you could get anyone off the street and get him to count.”

Five top stories from the world of work

1. The workplace under Labour — employers braced for biggest shake-up in a generation: The new government has made several significant promises on workers’ rights, some more radical than others. This excellent piece considers what Labour means for labour — and what employers, employees and those in-between workers that may be set to benefit most from fresh policy changes, should consider in the coming months.

2. The new normal of office life: Have we reached a plateau for home and office working? In this column — a hit with readers — Pilita Clark takes a long view of how employers are viewing their office space — including a fascinating insight into the way that human resources and real estate teams are working more closely together in some companies.

3. How Labour can boost British investment: The FT’s editorial yesterday focused on how Labour can boost British investment — including in improving EU relations, better channelling financial resources and a National Wealth Fund. Whether it succeeds has big implications for employers and workers.

4. Dyson to cut a quarter of UK workforce: In a blow to the UK — especially as the new government begins to rally business leaders — the manufacturer famous for its bag-free vacuum cleaners is slashing its UK staff. The billionaire founder of Dyson last year lost a legal battle over being accused of hypocrisy for supporting Brexit then moving his company headquarters to Singapore.

5. James Timpson, the key-cutter taking on England’s prisons: New prisons minister James Timpson has become known for supporting former prisoners to get on in the world of work, employing 600 ex-inmates in his nationwide key-cutting company. His approach could help turn around Britain’s packed prisons, but also shows the importance of offering humane, properly supported work.

One more thing . . .

This month, I’m reporting on recruitment horrors, from both applicants and employers. Think dozens of applications going unanswered, to floods of cover letters written by ChatGPT, to the economic malaise chilling hiring. If you’ve been affected by this, from whatever angle, and have a story to share I’d love to hear from you — email me on bethan.staton@ft.com.