A belated Happy Easter and thank goodness the weather has been so nice, lets keep going and deliver the results our campaigning deserves.
With local election and the referendum election verifications taking place in many areas on Thursday evening it is critical that you maximise the number of counting agents you have at the verifications.
Make sure that you identify from the Returning Officer whether the counting agents from the local elections and the general elections will be “mixed” in the same area of the same room and able to be used on either process.
It is incredibly important to make sure that your team gets to the count for the start and gets Tally data from every box for locals and nationals.
Do not underestimate the task
In this edition
- The count
- Planning for Polling Day
- Good morning/Eve of poll leaflets
- Knock up leaflets
Deadlines
Tuesday 26th April: The last day for the notice of appointment of counting agents. It is vital that the people attending the count know that they are there to carry out a crucial role (it is not a ‘jolly’). Make sure you both appoint counting agents and ensure that they are up to do a job of work. The task at the count is:
1) to ascertain how we (or our opponents) have fared in each polling district, and 2) to ensure that none of our votes are added to Labour/Tory/Other piles.
If you have new members of the team, who may not have attended a count before, explain the process to them. Believe me, for the uninitiated, it is a daunting occasion!
Template Instructions for the count are available in the articles below. Tuesday 26th April:- notice of appointment of polling agents. Polling agents can be invaluable in rural areas and those urban areas where the polling station can be an electoral scrum (to put it politely). They are the agent’s official representatives and have certain rights to enter polling stations and talk to returning officers on your behalf. Do not give this power to people who will use the title as an excuse to avoid knocking up etc. Make sure they know what they can and can’t do. You do not have to appoint anybody and the agent and candidate are often polling agents by default -check with your returning officer