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.
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 7th 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 8th 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