Polling Stations: Staff

(asked on 13th April 2017) - View Source

Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, if he has considered the potential merits of establishing a national database of polling station workers.


Answered by
Chris Skidmore Portrait
Chris Skidmore
This question was answered on 24th April 2017

Polling station staff are recruited, trained and paid on an ad hoc basis by individual Returning Officers (ROs) to work on particular election (or elections if held on the same day).

Returning Officers and their staff act independently of Government and so Guidance for them is provided by the Association of Electoral Administrators (AEA) and by the Electoral Commission.

Polling station staff will be both regular and new appointees. There is little merit, therefore, in establishing a database where the information becomes redundant once an election is over.

The creation and maintenance of a database would add to the workload of independent Returning Officers. It would also require legislation to make it mandatory.

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