Election Day.

(Pre-note: I'm not sure how much of this I'm actually allowed to put up, particularly with the counting stuff. However, given you can find this stuff in other places, I'm going to assume that it's fine for now.)

Worked as an Election Official yesterday at the Local Council elections. Place I was working at was actually just down the road, which was handy. 7:15am start, 10:30 finish. A pretty long day. There were four of us at that location, all up. Just four. Apparently, we had close to 1800 people go through there.

It's something I did at the last elections as well - can't remember if it was State or Federal - and I quite enjoyed it. You get to deal with people - and lots of people - and there's so many interesting names! (And yes, there was close to a page of Smiths. And they fit a lot of names on one page.) And as well as that, the way all the organisation and such works actually works pretty well with how my brain functions, so I find it fairly simple. While some weren't sure what the difference was between SATLs and RATLs, I had all the BTLs categorised. (SATL is Single Above The Line, one mark above the line; RATL is Random Above The Line, any more than one above the line; BTL is Below The Line, at least two marks below the line. It is actually a somewhat complex system, but it does make sense. BTLs actually had to be categorised according to individual candidates, while SATLs and RATLs only according to party. There are about 20 candidates or so, but only six parties.)

Though, of course, there's also the informal votes (or 'donkey' votes). And that ranges from blank, to people putting a line across the lot, to putting multiple unnumbered marks in boxes above the line, to derogatory comments/displays of artistic license. We had one guy who wrote, "Sorry, I didn't vote!" which was somewhat amusing. Note: SATLs, RATLs and BTLs get sorted and counted. Informals get dumped into a massive pile under the table and then just counted.

We also had quite a few hiccups. First up, having only four there, we didn't have anyone to replace us for a break. We had to wait until there wasn't really anyone coming in to have our break. Secondly, what a lot of people didn't realise is that there isn't really out of area voting for Local elections. There is for State and Federal, but not Local. Imagine trying to keep copies of forms for every area at every area. There's just too many areas. And the paperwork with this sort of thing is already monumental. (One of the many reasons I think this should become an automated electronic system. Save the trees! :P) So yes, we had a lot of people who didn't realise that, and tried to vote for the Sydney area or whatever. Then, we actually did three different areas within the one; we're in the Camden Area, but within that, there are three Wards - South, North, and Central. We were mainly South, but we also took North and Central. The two Election Officials took the South, the one Declaration Vote Issuing Officer took North and Central. A lot of people had no clue what the Wards were, thought Camden was just the one area. Tis slightly confusing.

Oh, and we had a fair few candidates/friends of them outside handing out fliers, with big posters, all that sort of thing. You know, the mandatory stuff.

So yeah, I found it pretty good. Guess I quite like that sort of work. Certainly prefer it somewhat to my work as a Kitchen Hand. Got no idea what exactly would be closest to that sort of work on a more regular basis, though.