Election 2010 .....

Well, I’ve done my bit for the country, working from dawn to dusk to ensure that the populace was given the opportunity of voting in its new government. And, in their collective wisdom, the populace has voted to provide what looks at this stage to be a hung parliament.

It was actually a great experience to work at a country-town polling booth. It was an early start – 7.30 on a cold winter’s morning. The Tiers around about were covered with a thick coating of snow and the sun was shining so who could whinge about being up and about so early. So perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised to see the people who arrived early and were happy to line up at the door waiting to get in.

After that, it was a steady stream all day with a few ‘rush hours’ when there might be 20 or so waiting to have their name ticked off. There were four tables set up and it only took a couple of minutes for each person to identify themselves and to collect their ballot papers. We had to ask three questions: “What is your full name?” ”Where do you live? “Have you voted already in this election?”


The last question raised a few eyebrows and comments, such as: “Isn’t one enough?” “They’re lucky to get one, let alone more than one! “Why would I bother?”. There were a few comments written on the ballot papers too: “I won’t give my vote to anyone on this list!”; “It’s too hard.” Australians certainly don’t get too excited about their politics.

There are a number of jobs that need to be done as a polling official and each of us took turns at each one. I quite enjoyed crossing off the names and handing out the ballots as it was very people-oriented. Being a crowd controller or ballot box guard was not nearly as interesting. We had about 2000 through the doors so it was a chance to meet most of the town.

The hardest part of the job was counting the votes. Doors closed at 6.00pm and the ballot boxes were opened and tipped out on to tables. The voting papers then had to be unfolded and stacked up for sorting. The small House of Reps papers were easy but the much larger Senate papers took a bit of handling. There were only 4 candidates for the Reps but 24 for the Senate. We thought about the workers in some mainland electorates where the Senate ballots could have up to 100 candidates and be sized accordingly. Imagine unfolding papers which are nearly a metre long!

We stood around the tables, unfolding and stacking, then roughly sorting into major groups before finer sorting and counting into bundles of fifty. It was very hard on the back and we were delighted to be dismissed at 8.30. It was a 13-hour shift but not what you might call hard work. I hope I get the chance to do it all again in the future. Marilyn has also enrolled for other elections and is looking forward to the experience.

The one thing which surprised me is that none of my fellow-workers seemed the slightest bit interested in the results of our polling station. The votes were counted, the results phoned in to the electoral office, and no one asked what the numbers were. Of course, we were a tiny part of a huge process so our results meant little. Still, it might have been nice to know what our little contribution added to the big picture.