I got press-ganged into spending Thursday afternoon verifying a huge number of postal votes in advance of the count which took place today.

The way that worked was: all the envelopes (B) were slit by machine and then distributed to the verifiers. We then had to retrieve the witness statement and ensure it was signed and everything filled in. Then we had to check the bar code on it with the bar code facing out of the window on envelope A (the one with the ballot in it). If everything matched OK envelope A was retrieved by the officials and taken to the slitting machine and then redistributed. Only then were the ballot papers removed - face down - and the European paper separated from the local election one. These were formed into separate piles and counted into bundles of 50 and handed in for counting today (Friday). There was no way that anyone could have told who had voted for what because the two stages were entirely separate.

Anything that looked irregular was put in the reject box to be looked over thoroughly by the supervisors.

It seems to have been a very successful exercise as my authority's turnout was an average of 50% - it has been in the low 30s up till now. Some wards were in the high 50s. I think the turnout would have been higher if the signature system wasn't required, but presumably would have been harder to cut out the possibility of fraud.


I do wonder how many other ballots the post office will 'disappear' because they didn't sort or deliver them in time!

Cheers
Sarah