Election 2008

Organising everyone in a district to vote on Wednesday 23 April and all the paperwork that goes with it is a mammoth task, but when you come up against administrative errors on top it can quickly become a nightmare.

Some of the problems Returning Officer and Senior Constable Steve Park faced were: "People not on the roll, on the roll but not in the Parish they think they're in, on the roll not once but twice, on the roll spelt one way and then another way. Those are the problems that we've encountered."

Voting at St Sampson's Polling Station

Whilst the odd problem would not cause too much of a delay the number that those staffing the polling stations had to deal with slowed the whole process down.

Problems have been ironed out either within the polling stations by phone calls back to myself, or the parish clerk, or we make phone calls to the Home Department while there are civil servants available to try and help us sort things out. I believe that in a sense slows the process up as people are waiting and we've got a queue, quite a long queue," said Park.

"When you are trying to run things smoothly having those sort of hiccups doesn't help," he commented.

One of the St Sampson's Polling Stations also had to contend with a road closure and although Environment, the department responsible for managing closures, said it would be open the road was still closed on the morning of the election.

"I think it should have been sorted out much earlier, it's unnecessary pressure on amateurs, we're not professional politicians in the douzenies. We give up our time freely, not just myself but others. Why would you want to place extra stress upon us?" asked Park.