If im honest it wasn't quite 23 hours but it was close enough and im sure u will not begrudge me a few minutes when i tell you about the tiring day I had on election day, Thursday 4th May 2006.
I am not actually going to start my story on Thursday I will start with the events on Wednesday afternoon where I attended a small conference type thingamyjig where i met the prime minister. Yes I Ant D have now met Tony Blair, the current, even if not for very long, Prime Minister. Also I again met the chancellor and Tessa Jowell but as I have already met them its not quite as big. Unfortunately I dont have a picture of this but if you happened to purchase a copy of the national guardian on Thursday you may have seen me.
So on to Thursday and what a horrible start. 5:45 am and i had to wake up to get to the "election centre" for 6am so I could deliver some ealry morning leaflets to people persuading them to come out and vote. This I did for 2 and a half hours before coming back for a nice full english at the local cafe courtesy of my Godmother. Then I went out to do my duty for the first time. Ahh what fun can be had from putting a little cross in a few boxes. After that I again reported back to the election centre to get some more jobs, I did a bit more leafletting before my first ever canvassing session. On this occasion I merely watched as others did i, just so i could get a feel for the occasion before my first official job of the day.
The job of an election teller is a dull and.. no just dull one. The objective is to obtain the polling number (the number that you are given to prove you are a vote carrying citizen) so that I can give it to my colleagues at the election centre so they can know who has voted. I had this job for 2 long hours.. although it wasnt all that bad, I started talking to the guy who was doing the job for the Green party (the main evil in this election campaign) and he turned out to be the dad of someone i used to go to school with or something. Nice guy he was despite working for the enemy.
After my 2 hours were up I went again back to the election centre and again out to canvass. This time I actually did go knocking on peoples doors reminding them to vote and it was on occasion strangely satisfying especially when knocking on the 2 peoples doors who said that they had forgotten it was election day and that they were thankful for me reminding them. (just to clarify I was only knocking on doors of known Labour party supporters)
The rest of the day was split up between more leafletting and canvassing untill 10pm when the polling stations closed, it was then time to go to the count...
The count was by far the most fun part of the day/night as it didnt involve walking up and down streets and although quite intense a job was greeted with good humour amongst most people on the winning side. First there was the process of splitting the votes into straight party voting (3 for the same party) and the split votes. During this process, the official watching people of whom I was one get to look at the ballot papers and if they think it is unclear who the person is voting for put it into the doubtful pile. Now to most this may sound quite dull but it was actually quite fun as I myself got a few out but the more experienced at the job put papers in the doubtful pile even though they were quite clearly valid and watching how the opposition get uptight was hilarious.
After this the numbers of straight votes are counted up, and already by this stage we were pretty confident of the win having 1400 compared to the 800 for the Greens and despite knowing that the Greens would do slightly better from the split votes it was never likely that they would catch up. And when the official adjudicators came round, your usually mild mannered author couldn't help but join in a slagging match against the opposition to get votes disqualified. I even made him show me the rule book at one point even though i knew it was a legitimate vote. I just got caught up in the emotion of the evening.
Of course we went on to win quite comprehensively, my dad who was one of the candidates got the highest with 1,700+ votes and the other two Labour candidates got 1,500+ and 1,300+ respectively. Leaving the Greens lagging behind with their best candidate getting into the low 1100s. This result for my dad i later found out was the highest in Colliers Wood since Siobhain McDonagh was councillor and as we all know she is now the MP, but I dont see my dad going on to that level.. well in fact i know he wouldnt. Unfortunately not all other wards in the borough had the same success and Labour ended up losing overall control of the London Borough of Merton but the fact that the tories did not actually gain the overall control meant that Merton bucked the inevitable trend and so did better than expected.
The count was finally finished at approximately quater to 4 and i was home by ten past or something and went straight to sleep, so as i said at the beginning not quite 23 hours but bloody long enough.
END
p.s. no apologies to anyone who is apathetic about politics, it is an important part of life and you SHOULD be interested