You are now in the last stages of the election.
You have distributed all your leaflets.
Make sure all your helpers know about your party on Saturday afternoon or Sunday afternoon. The time is family friendly. It is either a celebration or a wake. The purpose is to thank supporters and to raise money.
Some of your supporters do not drink alcohol. A pub or club may not be the best venue. Be careful not to fall foul of the rules against “treating” – no free food or drinks! You may sell tickets to your fundraising party or meal.
You are now into GOTV (Get Out The Vote). You have identified your vote, or you have identified your good areas.
You have checked that all your Breakthrough postal voters have voted. If they have not voted, they may go in person to the polling station and hand in their ballot. It is illegal for an election worker to be in possession of a completed postal vote ballot, no matter how good your intent.
Can a family member take the ballot? Usually yes, but check local policy with the Returning Officer beforehand.
Do they need a lift to take their ballot to the polling station?
A few people insist in voting in person but are not physically up to getting to the polling station. Do you have car lifts arranged? It is illegal to use taxis on election day even if they are volunteers.
Either Wednesday, or early Thursday morning you put a leaflet out only to your voters reminding them that the election is happening on Thursday. Give them a phone number to contact in case of difficulty.
On Thursday you begin “knocking up” or “knocking out” your voters. You are knocking on their doors and offering them a lift to the polling station. They will say that they have voted – you have to believe that. Or they have a firm plan for when they will vote, often with a friend or a family member. Make sure they know where the polling station is.
If you have a car mounted loudspeaker, you may use a prerecorded message in your good areas.
Do not use a microphone because there is a danger that your activist may go off message.
“Send Johnson a Message. Vote Breakthrough on Thursday. Vote Smith your Breakthrough candidate on Thursday” (Repeated x3). Move away. Keep moving.
And on Election Day
“Send Johnson a message. Vote Breakthrough Today, Vote for Smith your Breakthrough candidate.” (Repeated x3). Move away. Keep moving.
There are local rules about the hours and the volume.
DO NOT mention your opponent(s) at all.
You can use an ice cream jingle or other music. Keep it short!
You need lists of the Breakthrough voters in each street. The streets are grouped together for leafletting purposes. Use the same groups for “knocking out”.
If you have the bodies, you can have people at each polling station, or at your key polling station, taking the numbers of the voters. Then you cross them off your lists.
When you have a knocking team ready, you send them to the homes that have not yet voted. If people say they have voted, take their word for it.
Easiest is to offer the voters a lift to the polling station.
If you do not have the bodies to staff the polling stations, give each worker a list of your supporters. They will spend all day phoning or going door to door, until they are satisfied that all their voters have voted.
They must return the lists to HQ called “the committee rooms”. The Agent will go through the lists recording information and will then destroy the documents.
If you have the bodies, then at your “best” polling stations you want to ask the Presiding Officer (the person in charge of the polling station) the turnout figures at 10am, 2pm, 6pm and 9.50 pm. This provides a base line for future years. Is 276 voters at 2pm good, bad, or average?
The candidate and / or agent tours the polling stations, thanking the election staff for their work. Make a note of the large number on the ballot box, and which polling station it is. If there are two boxes, note both boxes.
Each “patch” seems to have different rules about wearing rosettes at the polling station, displaying posters near the polling station etc. Ask the Returning Officer for guidance well in advance.
THE COUNT
You will receive an invitation or invitations to see the postal ballots opened. You are limited to sending one or two people. Watch the ballots being opened. You will be able to “sample” (see below). There may be discussions about whether particular votes are valid.
If you are not there, you may never learn of the problems or questions.
About 10 days before the Count, you will receive a letter from the Elections Office. It tells you where the count is, and when it begins. You will be permitted the candidate, the agent, and a number of helpers. The Elections Office is often running a number of counts at the same location, with people attending on behalf of every candidate. Space may be rationed.
There may be a public gallery, with different information. Again, space may be limited.
The Elections Office wants you to return a form giving details about who will attend. These will be checked to see they are local people, and they have no serious criminal convictions.
Make sure you know where in the Hall your count is taking place. You all stay there. There is nothing more important going on in the Hall than your election.
Your team all know what to do. They have sampling sheets (see below).
As each ballot box is emptied onto the table, make a note of the Box number first. Then, as the ballots are unfolded, sample them.
SAMPLING SHEET
West Ward Election 5 May 2022
Box No ___________
| Candidate Name | Party | Tally | Total |
| Atkins | Conservative | ||
| Brown | Labour | ||
| Leadbeater | Green | ||
| Rice | Labour | ||
| Smith | Breakthrough | ||
| Thomson | Conservative | ||
| Underhill | Independent | ||
| Vernon | Green |
You have to be quick when sampling. ///// ///// +++++ or IIIII IIIII IIIII IIIII goes in the Tally column.
Later on, you can count the tally marks.
Do not try to count them all, just enough to have a snapshot.
Once the ballots have been opened, they will be counted.
Ask how many votes were in the box and record that.
The next step is that the votes are sorted. Where there is only one council seat in question, the ballots will be sorted. WATCH THE OPPONENT’S PILES to make sure that no Breakthrough votes are given to another candidate.
Where there are two council seats in the same ward, there will be a system for dealing with the problem. It may be that the solid Labour or solid Tory ballots are separated out and counted, and then the more complex ballot papers are individually tallied. When looking at the Breakthrough ballots, look to see which party got the other vote, because that is useful information.
If there are blank ballot slips, or rude messages written, or smiley faces or a tick instead of a cross, the Presiding Officer will discuss these with the agents. Except in the very closest of elections the odd vote does not matter, but it might!
In a very close election these spoiled ballot papers may be important. It has happened that an election is decided by the toss of a coin.
RECOUNTS If we are ahead, SHUT UP! If we are within 10%, demand a recount. It has happened that a bunch of 50 ballot papers crept into the wrong pile.
The winning candidate usually makes a short speech. Keep It Short!
Thank the Returning Officer and his /her staff for running an efficient operation, the police or being there, the other parties for a hard fought but fair election, and the Breakthrough workers and supporters for our hard fought campaign. It is important for democracy that elections are free and fair and are contested. You will do the best for your people in the ward whether they voted for you or not.
Press Release
Work with our party leader Alex Mays about press releases. Alex will be milking your successes overnight whilst you are hard on asleep.
You can do a “thank you” leaflet if you wish. You must do thank you letters to those who worked for you or made contributions in some way. A short hand written letter will have much more impact than you appreciate. In some cases it will be kept for decades, and possibly auctioned for party funds long after you and I have left this world.
SAMPLING.
The purpose of sampling is to find out where our strength is, and where the strength of the other parties is. This is helpful for planning future activity.
If you sample every box, and you know the box numbers, you or your numbers guru can tell you how many votes each party got in each polling district.
Added to the marked register, this is hugely useful information.
What is “the marked register”?
When you voted, the polling clerk made a pencil mark, usually a horizontal mark, against your name to indicate that you had been issued with a ballot paper. This marked register is a definitive statement of who did and did not vote.
For a limited period after the election, you may purchase a copy of the marked register. This s not an election expense because it was incurred after the election, and it did not in any way contribute to the election.
You use the information about who did not vote to see which Breakthrough supporters need a postal vote.
If entire streets or blocks of flats had a very low turnout, it suggests there are a lot of unhappy people there. If you can engage with them, and they turn out next time, Breakthrough will walk the next election.
If you have the energy, which you may not have straight away, you can canvass those who did vote, and mark many of them A for Against or DNC Do not Contact. You do not waste time on them in future years. This frees you up for known Breakthrough and “unknown”.
You have to complete an expenses form. If you have kept good records the form is pretty easy to complete.
Once all the expenses forms are in, they are open to public inspection. You can see how the other parties spent their money, and pick up ideas.
Divide the number of votes cast for each party into the expenses declared. Whose votes cost the most or the least?
Do not, as I heard one Parliamentary candidate do, thank X “for putting the pain into campaign”.
It was meant as a joke, but X walked out.
How do you “knock up” or “knock out”?
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