Press Release

    Thousands to work through the night to provide record number of Thursday counts

    6 May 2010

    A record number of constituencies are set to have their votes counted on the night of the general election, council leaders revealed today. More than four months' worth of work will be crammed into a single night in order to count up the votes in the most closely fought general election for a generation.

    - 627 out of 650 constituencies are having their votes counted on the night of May 6th – 96.5%.
    - That proportion has climbed in the past 60 years from 42.2% in 1950 to 95.8% in 2005.
    - in 2005, councils which declared before 8am the next morning spent a total of nearly 3,100 hours counting votes, equivalent to 129 days or just over four months

    An estimated 50,000 people are employed by councils to count up votes on election night. Councils maintain pools of casual workers to carry out counts and have recruited extra to cope with this year’s workload. All those responsible for vote counting have had training and operate in pairs, to check each other’s work and make sure there are no mistakes.

    Another 150,000 staff are on hand to run up to 50,000 polling stations where residents will be able to have their say in the secret ballot between 7am and 10pm.

    As well as the ballot to select 650 members of parliament, votes are being held in more than 160 local council areas to choose around 4200 councillors, and there are four mayoral elections.

    Dame Margaret Eaton, chairman of the Local Government Association Group, said:

    "Everyone involved in local government is passionate about democracy, and this election night is shaping up to be even more exciting than usual.

    "Election offices in councils have been hard at work making sure residents are registered to vote, understand their rights and know where to get information. They come into their own when we’re in a general election year like this one, co-ordinating the electoral register, organising postal votes and running polling stations.

    "The general election could not operate smoothly without the massive efforts which are put in at a council level, not just by the full-time council staff who oversee the process but also the thousands of temporary staff who help with the count. It is thanks to the many, many people who will be in town halls until the early hours processing ballot papers that many more of us can spend the night comfortably on our sofas, watching the results roll in."