It was with a sense of the freedom I now have as an out-of-work student that I signed up to work for the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) on the Federal election held a couple of weeks ago. After submitting an application from the AEC web site I received a phone call within a couple of days and was offered work at a pre-polling station in the fortnight leading to election day. I opted instead to work on election day only (May 21) since I didn’t want to divert time away from my studies. I was one of 100,000 temporary workers, in what is Australia’s biggest peace-time operation. Overall I felt it was a really good experience, one that I would be willing to repeat. I felt quite engaged with our democratic process, perhaps for the first time in my life.
AEC’s onboarding process was almost entirely based online in the AEC Employment portal. It was where we had to lodge our employment paperwork – tax file number, superannuation, bank details, and signed employment contract. The AEC portal was also where we had to complete the required training modules. These were easy to follow and each had a quiz at the end. In my role as polling assistant the training covered the tasks of ordinary vote issuing officer, ballot box guard, queue controller and (thanks to COVID-19) hygiene officer. We were also sent an election procedure handbook by mail which we were required to read and a few days before election day, I was phoned by the poll supervisor (Dana) to check if there were any issues or questions.
The important ‘election delivery principles’ stressed in the training were
- integrity of the result
- efficient processes and procedures, and
- good customer service
Integrity of the result had priority over all other considerations – for instance, if a voter accidently dropped a personal item into the ballot box, we were not permitted to open the ballot box to retrieve it for them. They would have had to return later after the boxes had been opened for counting. It is apparent that integrity of the result has a heavy influence on the rather old-fashioned, manual process of counting ballot papers. One of the instructions for counting included ‘banding’ of ballot papers into groups of 50 with a rubber band – it took me back to my old days as a bank teller. I suppose that computer systems are not yet sufficiently trusted to deliver an indisputable election outcome.
Election day started early – my shift started at 7am and even though I arrived early at the school hall, it was already a hive of activity and the polling booths had been set up. There were three other people like me who had not worked at an election before, and four people with election experience. I gathered that a couple of them had ordinary ‘day jobs’ at the school. Voters began arriving from 8am and as the day progressed we rotated into the various duties. I started as a queue controller, did a stint as ballot box guard and for the remainder of the time was at the ballot issuing table. This required us to locate and tick off voters from the electoral roll for our electorate (similar in size to a small telephone directory), and give instructions on how to fill out their ballot papers, which we had to initial before handing out. If someone made a mistake, we gave them new ballot papers and had to put the ‘spoilt’ papers in a sealed envelope for the ballot reconciliation at the end of the day. I was briefly pulled off the ordinary ballot table and shown the declaration voting process (for voters not registered in the local electorate), entailing a few extra steps – not part of the job I was hired for, but offered more experience for the next election.
The work wasn’t too difficult, and I enjoyed the interaction with the other workers, we got to know each other a little through the course of the day. Finding names on the electoral roll was a little difficult physically, with my face mask and spectacles that kept fogging up. My favourite part of the work was the ballot sorting and counting after 6pm. The boxes were ceremoniously opened in front of a scrutineer and the contents tipped out onto a table. We then dived in and manually sorted according to the primary vote in the first sweep, then second preference for those candidates who received the fewest votes. We started with the House of Representatives ballots, then the Senate papers. It was a long day – we finished up a little before 10pm, which was early according to Dana.
An unexpected benefit of the experience, I learned firsthand the logic behind the so called two-party preferred system we have in Australia. Each ballot must number the different candidates in order of preference, otherwise it is not counted. A lot of people dislike this system because they believe the election outcome should be based on the primary vote (number one candidate only) and they complain that the system favours the two major parties. However it only does this to the extent that the major parties are supported in their electorate. If the (hypothetical) Lunatic Fringe Party received 30% as the highest proportion of primary votes in an electorate, this would not be a desirable outcome to a remaining 70% who marked the party at the bottom of their preferences. The preference system is about electing the least objectionable candidate to the majority of voters in an electorate.
Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash