Oops, I slipped a bit. I had promised myself that I would post at least once a week and I have just made it this time!

Less than a week away Thursday, 5 May 2011 sees an election in Scotland to elect members to the Scottish Parliament (MSPs). In addition there is a national referendum (that is the entire United Kingdom) on a possible change in the method by which Members of Parliament (MPs) are elected to the House of Commons of which more later.

The campaigning by the various political parties (and quite a number of independent candidates) can be interesting (and can be entertaining). But I wondered about the workers behind the scenes and not those working to have a particular politician elected. Instead I was thinking about those thousands of people you see sitting in the Polling Stations handing out the ballot papers, those that actually count the votes overnight and then there are those who have to be on hand to announce the results during the day following the election. Who are these hard working and dedicated public servants? What are their conditions of employment and do they get paid or are they volunteers?

I had thought to myself that it would an interesting experience to ‘see’ the election from an entirely different perspective as someone on the inside. But a little research soon dashed my hopes and raised some concerns. Firstly, those nice smiling people in the Polling Stations are not volunteers they are paid workers. So… could I get a job not only for the experience of being a part of the election process but also make a wee bit money in so doing? The simple answer is no. The reason is that only local government employees are elegible to work in the administration of our democratic elections. This means that only they can be employed (and therefore be paid) to oversee all elections held in the UK: 

• Local elections (election of councillors to a City or Council authority)
• Elections to devolved government (Scotland, Wales and Ireland)
• National (UK) elections (MPs in the House of Commons)
• Elections to the European Parliament

Although disappointed at not being able to be employed in any capacity in the forthcoming election I was not too concerned as I was not in particular need of the money but I wondered – what about people who are? It seemed odd to me that only a particular group of people are acceptable for this work and that they were already in employment. Was there a reason for this?

In Scotland elections are the responsibility of the ‘Returning Officer’ the local official responsible for the smooth running in their local authority area. I was rather surprised that this is nearly always the senior employee of a local authority and that he or she was therefore re-employing their own staff albeit for a diffenent function. That said there are other large organisations which employ people for short periods of time in order to complete a particular task. Why not for democratic elections? I wee bit more digging I discovered the official reason only council employees can be employed as ‘Count Staff’ and this is taken from the City of Edinburgh Council web site: 

“I don’t work for the Council, can I work at one of the counts?

In other words local government does not have the ability to check whether an individual is ‘legal’ and so relies on its own employees who have already gone through a vetting process.

For the rules regarding ‘Count Staff‘ employed by the City of Edinburgh Council click here or on the previous links.