Why it’s getting harder to staff election recounts

Hello and welcome to Working It.

I’m Bethan, deputy editor of Work and Careers, taking over from Isabel in a week of change for the UK. After a snap general election, six weeks of campaigning and a landslide Labour victory, we have a new government.

My colleagues here at the Financial Times are doing a fantastic job covering what this means for Labour, from workers’ rights to business investment, to the massive change for civil servants, staff and MPs themselves as a new team of MPs comes to Parliament.

However, a conversation with a friend over the weekend made me see the election from a different angle. She had volunteered to count votes in my London constituency, so she spent election night going through ballot papers and deciding what local people wanted the next government to be.

I was intrigued to learn more about this behind-the-scenes work, especially since my friend had been having so much fun. Read on to learn more about what it takes to assemble a national team of tens of thousands of people to count votes, staff polling stations, and do the administrative work required to make elections happen.

Get out and vote! (counters)

“I wouldn’t say it was chaotic,” Peter Stanyon, executive director of the Association of Election Administrators, tells me when I ask him what it was like to manage this month’s election. “I would say it was horrendous.”

Part of the challenge was recruiting the 140,000 polling station staff and 40,000 vote counters that Stanyon said were needed. And getting trusted staff to do the job is “increasingly difficult.” While he stresses that the counts in all 650 House of Commons constituencies were adequately staffed, in many cases it was “stretched to the limit” and required creative measures – “wringing arms, saying how desperately we need staff” – to find enough staff. “It’s certainly creaking around the edges.”

Part of the problem is demographics. Election volunteers — who are paid “something above minimum wage” to greet people at polling places and hand out ballots, or to count votes at night — tend to be older. Not enough young people are signing up to replace those who are retiring. Stanyon also believes the job is getting harder, thanks in part to new in-person ID requirements for those who are eligible to vote.

At the national level, the Electoral Commission is thinking of ways to “fill the void,” says Stanyon, including clever ways for election administration to “get into the public psyche.” TikTok videos that have generated a stir have been aimed at young people, though she warns that some unofficial content underestimates the work involved.

However, expanding the pool of candidates for election supervisors is not easy. The first requirement for the job, in addition to being able to count, is impartiality and reliability, so vetting must be rigorous. In the UK (as is common around the world) it is prohibited for administrators to have assisted candidates running for office.

At the local level, the official people in charge of keeping things in order, usually across several electoral districts in an area, are electoral officers. They are personally responsible for the conduct of elections in their area, an anxiety-inducing peculiarity in a British system also known for its electoral supervisors dressed in extravagant feathered hats, lace ruffles and robes.

One of them is Mark Heath, who was acting electoral officer in this election and oversaw two Southampton constituencies, employing around 300 polling station assistants and 200 vote tellers in this election, “all people I trust.” While it was easier than expected, recruiting “was a struggle,” he says, especially when 12 polling station volunteers pulled out at the last minute.

Heath describes his volunteer group as a “mixture of people – robust, reliable, good citizens”. Most had previously worked as election staff. Many, he says delicately, are “in their golden years”, although this year he set out to search polling stations for young talent to train the “next generation” of officials. Banks used to be a source of volunteers who were “very quick and adept at counting bits of paper”, but digitalisation has put an end to that. Local authorities, where there are informal and formal traditions of staff helping out, are now a prime recruiting route. But Heath fears that even here public spirit may be waning.

This is not a problem unique to the UK. Some 70 countries will hold elections this year. Julia Brothers, deputy director of elections at the US-based National Democratic Institute, tells me that they all have different approaches to recruiting staff. Some rely on municipal workers or teachers, others on volunteers with a sense of civic responsibility, others, like Mexico, on a lottery system.

Interestingly, though, Brothers isn’t too concerned about who is selected to count the votes. What really matters are things like transparency, training and “foolproof” checks and balances. “It’s more about the systems than the people,” he says. “If you have a good, transparent system, you can get anybody off the street and make it count.”

Five standout stories from the world of work

1. The workplace under Labour: Employers brace for biggest shake-up in a generation The new government has made several important promises on workers’ rights, some more radical than others. This excellent article looks at what Labour means for workers and what employers, employees and middlemen who may benefit most from the new policy changes should consider in the coming months.

2. The new normal of office life: Have we reached a dead end when it comes to working from home and from the office? In this popular column, Pilita Clark takes an in-depth look at how employers view their office spaces, including a fascinating insight into how HR and real estate teams are working more closely together at some companies.

3. How Labour can boost UK investment: Yesterday’s FT editorial focused on how Labour can boost British investment, including by improving relations with the EU, better channelling financial resources and creating a National Wealth Fund. The success of this project will have major implications for business and workers.

4. Dyson to cut a quarter of UK workforce: In a blow to the UK – particularly as the new government begins to mobilise business leaders – the manufacturer famous for its bagless vacuum cleaners is cutting staff in the UK. Last year, Dyson’s billionaire founder lost a legal battle after being accused of hypocrisy for supporting Brexit and then moving his company’s headquarters to Singapore.

5. James Timpson, the key cutter who is facing jail time in England: The new prisons minister, James Timpson, has made a name for himself by supporting ex-prisoners into the workforce, employing 600 former inmates in his national key-cutting company. His approach could help improve the situation in Britain’s overcrowded prisons, but it also demonstrates the importance of providing humane, well-supported work.

One more thing . . .

This month, I’m reporting on the horrors of hiring, from both applicants and employers. Think dozens of unanswered applications, floods of cover letters written by ChatGPT, economic malaise slowing hiring. If this has affected you, from any angle, and you have a story to share, I’d love to hear about it. Email me at bethan.staton@ft.com.