When you cast your vote in tomorrow’s general election spare a thought for the polling station staff who work long hours to make sure everyone can exercise their democratic right.
Each station has a presiding officer and at least one poll clerk helping voters, ensuring procedures are followed and making sure the integrity of the ballot is preserved.
This week’s election will involve around 350 people organising and running the stations across North Lincolnshire – and some of them have been doing it a long time.
There are strict rules on everything from the time the station opens and closes to how many poster have to be displayed.
One of the area’s longest serving election workers is Marlene Robinson, who remembers first serving as a poll clerk in the early 1960s when she worked from Glanford Council.
The station was in the old school in Broughton – now the community wellbeing hub – and Marlene remembers the local Red Lion pub send over a platter of food for the workers, who aren’t allowed to leave the station until polls close.
“It was delicious,” she said. “I thought if this is what it’s like being a poll clerk I’ll be doing it again.”
Other elections were not so hospitable – Marlene remembers working from a portable building near Asda that only had two plugs – one for the lights, the other for a heater.
“We had to turn the heating off every time we needed to boil the kettle.”
On another occasion she nearly had to set up the polling station in the boot of a car when the presiding offer was late – they arrived in the nick of time.
The law states the polls have to open at 7am, even if that means from a car park.
Modern ballot boxes are made of a lightweight material with built in seals to prevent anyone tampering with the votes.
Previously they were heavy metal boxes and had to be sealed with sealing wax.
“You had to melt it with a match and be careful you didn’t set the ballot papers on fire!”
John Brooman has been staffing the elections since the early 1970s all over the Scunthorpe and Bottesford area.
“I enjoy it,” he said. “You meet different people and can have a nice chat as it is a long day.”
Like Marlene, John can remember when polling station staff carried heavy metal ballot papers around and worked through the night counting the ballot papers.
“Nowadays you just shut everything up and go home,” he said.
He can also remember getting into trouble when the freezing cold polling station he was working in had no heating.
Polling station doors stay open from 7am until 10pm no matter what the weather.
It was the days before mobile phones and he was sent by his presiding officer to find a phone box and ring the council to ask for it to be sorted out. Instead he got told off for leaving the station.
“We did get some heating eventually,” he said ruefully.
He says the daftest thing he remembers was when sticks of bamboo were provided to push down ballot papers in the boxes. The joints on the bamboo kept getting stuck in the slot so it was someone’s job at the council to file down every stick by hand.
Marlene says she will carry on working the election as long as she can.
“A lot of people say ‘I don’t know how you can do all those hours’ but it isn’t boring and before you know where you are it’s the middle of the afternoon.
“I’ve really enjoyed it over the years and I really think if people have a vote they should use it.”
