Remember true heroes of election

Had a short piece in yesterday's Evening News about the upcoming election ... totally a-political, I promise!

Link here - and I'll re-produce the text below:

Election heroes

As most readers will be only too aware, there are now less than 2-weeks left until what looks like will be the closest UK General Election for a generation. 

Many residents may actually have already cast their vote, as one of the over 73,000 Edinburgh electors who now have a Postal-Vote? The total number of registered voters, for the whole of Edinburgh, is now over some 347,000 electors.

With a record General Election turnout forecast, it doesn’t take a mathematical genius to work out that the smooth-running of such an ‘election event’ is a massive undertaking and involves a huge effort by many hundreds of dedicated public servants.

And it’s those ‘election heroes’ --- I’m most certainly not talking about the politicians, or the political Parties here! --- but the many hundreds of public sector workers who make the election happen, that I feel rarely get the praise they deserve.

They make sure that the 145 polling places, right across the Capital City, are fully staffed from 7am through to 10pm on election-day, Thursday 7^th May. Needless to say, many of them are there prior to 7am and beyond 10pm. And for the whole day, they guide electors through the process, and ensure all queries are answered politely and professionally.

That task, of itself, would be challenging enough --- a possible +80% turnout, at 145 polling places, of some 347,000 electors, for 15 solid hours …

… but after the polls close, yet more hundreds of mainly public sector staff will be at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC) to count all of the votes cast!

That process will go on, well into the early hours of the morning of Friday 8^th May. Hundreds of thousands – literally! – of pieces of (very important!) paper need to be sorted, counted, verified and checked.

And many readers may well be aware that during that process, dozens of political Party Members (from across the political spectrum) will be carefully scrutinising what goes on – physically, looking right over the shoulders of the counting-staff. It’s a process which, as I’m sure you can imagine, does get tense.

Yet, in the numerous election counts I’ve attend throughout my 22-years in Edinburgh, I have never once – not once – heard a single complaint from a member of the counting staff about the detailed, and intense, scrutiny they come under? Indeed, I’m endlessly amazed at how calm, collected and polite they all are at 3am in the morning when someone asks them a vague and outlandish question about the process they’re undertaking!

And this year, as has infrequently happened in the past, the whole process could have to be repeated if one of the 5 Edinburgh constituency contests is close, and a re-count is required?

At the end of it all the results have to be agreed with the numerous political Parties taking part; they have to be announced publicly to the waiting media; and – crucially – the whole process has to be seen as fair, thorough and professional … and the result thus accepted by all concerned.

Frankly, I’m amazed that year after election-year … and we do have a lot of election years these days! … that outcome is successfully achieved; and a clear result, which is accepted as fair by all concerned, is arrived at in the morning after the polling places close.

So – please – when you cast your vote, do give thanks to the hundreds of public servants who make the whole process run so smoothly. Do reflect on the scale of what they undertake – both on polling day, and throughout the overnight count.

For, without a doubt, it’s those staff who are the real election heroes.

Cllr Andrew Burns

Leader of the City of Edinburgh Council