Ensuring that there is a sufficient staff, which has been trained to be competent in their required duties in voting stations and at the vote count, is the backbone of voting operations. For a national election, staffing and training will be one of the biggest staff mobilization exercises undertaken in a country. Similarly at provincial and local election levels, staffing and training requirements for voting operations will be the largest personnel exercises administrations are likely to implement. The sheer scale of the exercise requires precise planning.
Staffing for voting will generally be the largest cost component in election operations, small savings in unit costs can have a large impact on overall cost-effectiveness. But electoral officers and the effectiveness with which they serve the public are also the most visible service aspect of the election and are the point of interaction that citizens have with the electoral process. The basis of staffing plans must be cost-effective service delivery, rather than merely low cost service delivery.
Staffing Profiles
In order to effectively determine staff functions and categories for voting operations, staffing profiles should be developed for voting stations and the count. Development of these profiles will require:
• determination of the service standards that voting operations staff must deliver to the public
• defining staff duties and any staff categories required to ensure comprehensive, service-oriented implementation of voting procedures
• determining the required staffing levels in voting stations to deal with the number of potential voters in each voting station;
• consideration of any temporary administrative assistance required in the planning and organization of voting operations
While effective staffing numbers will vary widely in different election environments, according to factors such as the procedural framework and the experience of both officials and voters have had of current voting procedures, adopting standard staffing models for voting stations and count centers will assist in delivering cost effective services From the number of voting locations and estimates of the staffing needs at each, a master summary of required staff to be recruited should be drawn up for each electoral district or voting administration area
Recruitment of Staff
In accordance with staffing profiles for voting stations and other voting operations activities, a recruitment strategy that aims to finalize engagement of sufficient staff in time for them to be trained to the required competency levels prior to their taking up their duties needs to be implemented.
Essential elements of an effective recruitment strategy include:
• Determining the responsibilities for recruitment action, and the appropriate timing of recruitment of staff. In many environments, decentralization of recruitment to the local level will provide a more effective method of obtaining suitable staff
• Determination of the skill levels and personal qualities required for employment, against which applicants for employment are to be assessed. In defining recruitment standards, it is important to ensure that voting operations staff is not only capable of undertaking their duties, but also that they are representative of the local communities which they are serving
• Devising cost-effective recruitment methods. These may include general advertising for staff, seeking staff from other state agencies, or approaching professional associations or other organizations whose members are likely to possess the requisite skills for voting operations.
Important factors in maintaining cost-effective recruitment is the endeavor to retain the services, from election to election, of experienced electoral officerswho have given satisfactory service. The method of selection of successful applicants needs not only to be transparent but also ensure that applicants are properly assessed so that the most appropriate staff are selected.
• Temporary staff engaged for voting operations should be employed on a cost-effective, and fair, contract basis.
• The number of staff recruited should also allow for contingencies such as unavailability of staff on voting day and replacement of staff who do not satisfactorily complete training.
Training of Staff
Training of staff for voting operations has to instill competencies and the election integrity ethos in a large number of trainees in a relatively short time.
Organization of training will need careful planning as to:
• what competencies need to be developed in voting operations staff , who is to be trained and the training timetable
• training materials, locations and reference materials to be provided to trainees
• developing consistent session content and delivery styles for all trainers
• any training necessary for those who will act as trainers of voting staff
• ongoing monitoring of voting staff to determine that they are knowledgeable about current administrative or legislative amendments.
The extent of this need will be very much determined by whether training is conducted in a centralized or distributed fashion and whether professional trainers or supervisory voting operations staff is used for training polling officials.
Equally important to the effective delivery of training is that it is conducted in suitable venues and utilizes appropriate training aids
Evaluation
To ensure that training has been effective, the training plans and methodologies also need to incorporate methods of assessing voting staff competencies during and immediately after completion of training and a program for evaluating the success of staff recruitment and training processes
Briefing Other Election Participants
The electoral management body's involvement in training will usefully include providing at least materials, and preferably briefing sessions, for other participants in the election process, including;
• parties, candidates and their representatives
• independent observers
• security force members with election security responsibilities
Codes of Conduct
To ensure a high level of service and integrity, and to ensure that staff are aware of the behavioral norms which they are expected to adhere to, it is useful to develop codes of conduct that all voting operations staff must undertake to uphold. Similarly codes of conduct for political participants in voting operations will provide them with an integrity framework and a guide for voting operations staff in their dealings with party and candidate representatives.
