Polling stations will be open across Britain for the July 4 general election, but home portacabins can already be hired for music festivals (Alamy)
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Rishi Sunak’s decision to hold a general election in early July has created a “huge challenge” for organisers, who face a race against time to recruit staff and find space to hold polling stations.
The timing of the election took Westminster by surprise last week, as the standing consensus was that the Prime Minister would likely wait until the autumn before heading to the country.
Peter Stanyon, chief executive of the Association of Electoral Administrators, said the significantly tighter timeline means there is “huge pressure” on teams dealing with the first major national vote since the introduction of voter ID, as well as changes to the rules around proxy and voting by mail.
Stanyon, head of the organization that provides assistance and advice to election administration professionals across the country, said PoliticsHome that following the “technical rehearsal” of the May local elections three weeks ago, staff are now faced with the “huge challenge” of getting the elections organized within the next six weeks with the changes to the system.
Stanyon said local teams “could have difficulty getting the bodies behind the desks” to run election processes, and that portacabins could be in short supply for voting purposes because the election will take place in the middle of the festival season.
“There are many challenges that will not be consistent in every constituency, but there will be a different challenge in every constituency,” he said.
This year, hundreds of thousands of British citizens living abroad will be able to register to vote thanks to the abolition of the rule that saw people who left Britain lose their right to vote more than 15 years ago.
Stanyon now expects that there will be ‘larger numbers coming in’ of applications from overseas voters, and although ‘if the application is complete and people know where they have lived before, we can track these down and it is a relatively simple process’, there could be ‘ happen a lot’. seek more evidence” if information is missing or incorrect.
The new overseas provision is not the only difference with the electoral system this year.
The Electoral Act 2022 introduced a number of changes to the rules surrounding voting, including in the area of voter identification, and changes have also been made to proxy and postal voting.
As explained by the Electoral Commission, there is a limit to the number of people for whom a person can be a proxy, even if voting on behalf of people who do not live in Britain.
Rules require people who choose to vote by mail to reapply every three years. In addition, they can only submit their own mail-in ballot and five more, and must submit paperwork explaining why they are submitting those votes.
The July 4 general election will also be the first time voter identification rules apply nationwide, as they have been used in every vote since the local elections in May 2023.
Polling place teams now have “a much more complicated job than even three years ago,” Stanyon said.
“Because you’re dealing with the possibility of turning someone away because the wrong type of ID was provided or not provided at all, you should vote by mail if it’s made into a station.”
Staff will also make calls to try to organize access to polling stations, often housed in schools or other public buildings such as community centres.
Obtaining portacabins to use as polling places could also be problematic, Stanyon suggested, as many vendors had already signed up for other events on the summer calendar, such as music festivals.
The changes, he predicted, are one reason there are concerns about hiring. Looking at the “complexity of the actual voting process” leads some to reconsider the responsibilities. “The staff is now less willing to put themselves forward, people are dropping out, some returning officers are really having a hard time getting the bodies behind the desks to get the process moving,” Stanyon said.
This is according to a source who works in election services for a local authority in the south of England PoliticsHome that “one of the hardest things to do is hire staff to work elections.”
They described a general election as a “different beast” to local votes, and believe there will be a “battle” to recruit people.
“We have a lot of polling stations and there are supposed to be a minimum number of people working in those polling stations, especially for general elections, based on the number of voters who go to those polling stations.
“We will struggle to get enough people to work in this election.”
“There’s just no one who wants to do it, especially because of all the added responsibilities based on voter ID and now also the handling of postal votes. So there is a great responsibility on the shoulders of the people who work in this polling station.”
They added: “We know this happens and we like doing it, but we want to be respected for it.”
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