Following the success of the May 2023 local elections we wanted to shine a spotlight on the work done by the IT department to support the elections team. They helped in the lead up to polling day and at the count itself.

Postals

Prior to polling day there was plenty of work to do to support the elections team. Postal vote counting takes place in the lead up to the count and two laptops and a scanning station were set-up to help at the Civic Centre to assist with this.

Polling Stations

Accessible polling card webpages were also created. This is the first time we have done that for an election.

We generated QR codes for each ward/parish and these were printed and made available at each polling station. This enabled visibly impaired voters to have the nominated candidates read aloud to them impartially by a screen reader – previously the alternative would have been to have a Presiding Officer read the candidates to the voter.

Print Room

Along with delivering the majority of print work required to assist in the running of a successful Local Election the print room team also took on the daunting task of printing and setting up 90 full size pull up banners, one of each was used at each polling station. This was the first time this has been taken in-house and it was a great success.

The Count

The IT team were on hand to help at the count itself at the Stour Centre on Friday 5 May 2023.

A Wi-Fi point was installed in the count hall with more than 40 devices (laptops and work mobile phones) connected to this throughout the day.

In addition to the Wi-Fi, they also put in two 50-foot network cables. These were hardwired in to support the laptops at the Presiding Officer’s table to ensure they had a more secure connection.

Another aim was to try and make the count more of an interactive experience for candidates and election agents and this was achieved by placing a 70” TV screen at the back of the hall. The screen was positioned at the back of the hall so that there was less crowding at the adjudication table with people trying to hear the latest results.

The TV showed which mini count each ward/parishes votes were being counted at and also displayed live results as they were announced throughout the day and enabled a clear view of the ever-changing political makeup post-election.

The election results were displayed on a laptop at the Presiding Officer’s table which was then streamed to the TV. An auto refresh plugin was downloaded and used so that the latest results were on the TV screen as soon as a result was declared by the Presiding Officer and published on ModernGov. This was achieved by working closely with Paul Libreri and Kirsty Morland to ensure that our Xpress Elections software and ModernGov were integrated.

A Professional PA system was hired for the day for all of the announcements that were declared and the IT team were also present at the Count hall to deal with any issues on the day.