Studying Time: 4 minutes
Up to date fifteenth April 2024
The native elections will likely be held on Thursday 2nd Might 2024. Many individuals don’t realise that native elections are greater than an opportunity to forged your vote — they’re a possibility to earn cash!
Whenever you vote in any election, you’ll have observed the ballot clerks overseeing every little thing.
Nonetheless, have you ever ever thought-about making a bit of additional money as a ballot clerk your self? Are you able to make your self free for the entire day?
In that case, you possibly can earn round £250 for a day’s work in a polling station. It’s a fast and straightforward money-making concept and splendid if you’re retired or a scholar.
Who Can Change into a Ballot Clerk?
Anybody is eligible to behave as a ballot clerk, offering they’re over 18, literate and numerate and never have labored for a candidate standing within the present election. You have to even have the proper to worok within the UK. There are some issues it’s essential to declare in your software kind too, together with whether or not you’re a member of a political celebration, you’re an energetic campaigner within the elections, and if you happen to’re a detailed relative of a present candidate. This will likely not go in opposition to your software possibilities, however it have to be declared.
The one different requirement is that candidates have to be on the electoral roll – if you happen to’re not, you actually needs to be. Not being on the electoral roll can injury your credit standing!
If you happen to’re not on the electoral roll you possibly can register to vote on the Authorities’s official web site. You can even discover your native Electoral Registration Workplace by clicking right here. Alternatively, give your native authority a name.
What’s Concerned?
As a ballot clerk, you’re there to set-up the polling station and ensure right process is adopted all through the day, together with after voting closes.
Your duties embody checking persons are eligible to vote, checking and marking electoral numbers, stamping and issuing poll papers, and, crucially, ensuring that votes are forged in secret and put into the poll field. For the primary time ever, all in-person voting requires photographic ID in any respect polling stations within the UK for Parliamentary elections – so that you’ll must have an excellent eye for faces, since you’ll be checking voters’ IDs to verify their id.
You reply to the Presiding Officer, who’s the official accountable for a polling station.
It’s a protracted day, often from early morning (often 6am) until a minimum of 11pm when the voting finishes.
You can even apply to assist rely the poll papers within the night, however remember that that is, as you possibly can most likely think about, fairly frantic work. You’ll want to have the ability to work nicely underneath strain and likewise focus in busy environments.
For extra data on the duties of a ballot clerk, and the necessities to grow to be one, look on the Handbook for Polling Station Employees right here.
How A lot Can I Make?
The quantity you earn varies from council to council so it will depend on the place you apply.
You have to be getting a minimum of £150 for the day and councils who pay essentially the most will provide £250 or extra.
To learn how a lot your native council pays, merely go to their web site and search ‘ballot clerk’. For a listing of native authorities in England and Wales, click on right here.
It’s additionally value making an allowance for that when you’ve got labored at a polling station on a minimum of two different events, you possibly can apply to grow to be a Presiding Officer, which implies extra money! (For instance, a Presiding Officer in Herefordshire makes over £350 whereas in Merton, London, it’s £430.
There are different roles accessible which can not require you to be accessible for the total day. Bristol Council has some nice movies and leaflets describing the completely different job roles and expectations.
How Do I Apply?
Normally, ballot clerks have labored for his or her native council, however this expertise just isn’t a prerequisite. Most councils and native authorities have data on easy methods to grow to be a ballot clerk on their web site. Both go to their web site and search ‘ballot clerk’, or just Google ‘grow to be a ballot clerk’ adopted by your city, metropolis, or council. For a listing of council web sites, click on right here.
Alternatively, you possibly can name your native authority and ask for the Elections and Registration Workplace, or ship them an e mail telling them that you just’re . They’ll ship you a kind in the event that they want clerks. Don’t go away it till every week earlier than an election to use as a result of the positions will most likely already be crammed – it’s higher to use sooner quite than later.
Some native authorities recruit all yr spherical so you possibly can preserve making use of and be placed on a ready record for the subsequent election.
If you’re chosen as a ballot clerk you’ll attend a coaching/briefing session after which be sworn within the day earlier than the election.
On Election Day, a Presiding Officer oversees the entire station and can supervise and instruct you.
Have you ever ever made cash as a polling clerk? Do you have got another good cash making concepts? Tell us within the feedback part beneath – we love to listen to from you!
