Effectively calculating the number of staff required in voting stations is essential for providing quality service to voters and controlling voting operations costs.

Overall, the number of staff required will be directly related to the number of registered voters that have to be serviced. However, the actual staffing levels required in each voting station will be directly related to a number of other factors including:

• the range of services to be provided, in terms of voting facilities required by the legal framework and additional services provided to assist voters;

• the complexity of the voting procedures;

• the physical layout of the voting station;

• how familiar and experienced voters are with the voting procedures;

• the number of hours during which voting will take place;

• whether a single election or multiple simultaneous elections are being held;

• the service standards for voter processing that have been set by the electoral management body. There are also localized factors that may affect staffing levels in specific voting stations, such as:

• the characteristics of the local voting population, particularly in terms of age and literacy in the official language to be used for voting;

• local conditions that may exacerbate peak periods of voter attendance and thus require additional staff to ensure service standards are met throughout voting day.

Effective Staffing Levels

Given that there will be wide variations in these factors; it is difficult to determine an ideal staffing level applicable to all environments, which will ensure that all the functional responsibilities in a voting station are effectively implemented.

However, there are some general principles for determining staffing levels that can be applied. Most important is in establishing a standard staffing model for voting stations at a particular election. The manner in which this is done will depend on the way in which voting sites are determined  In broad terms, there are two basic methods for doing this:

1. By dividing electoral districts into voting station areas containing approximately equal numbers of voters, one staffing model may be developed that is appropriate for all voting stations. This implies the formulation, either through regulation or preferably by administrative direction, of a standard voting station size.

In some circumstances, particularly where accessibility needs to be preserved for rural residents or there are large differences in literacy levels between rural and urban residents, there may need to be two different models for rural and urban electoral districts. This model is relatively simple to implement since it provides a single or very limited number of standard staffing requirements for voting stations.

1. A more flexible policy on how many voters will be accommodated at each voting station may be determined by efficiencies that can be gained from local circumstances (e.g., size of premises available, experience of staff).

Staffing is determined on the basis of a sliding scale directly related to the number of voters expected at each voting station. While there can be efficiencies derived from this method, it is most viable in advanced electoral management systems with access to computers and relevant software to determine staff allocations for each voting station.

Flexibility

The way that standard staffing for a voting station is determined will require some managerial flexibility to adapt staff numbers to local circumstances. This is as useful where additional staff are required to provide an acceptable service level (e.g., in areas with high proportions of aged residents or low literacy levels or where voter traffic may be slower and information needs greater) as it is for circumstances where standard staffing is excessive and cost efficiencies can be achieved without affecting service.

However, such flexibility should be treated on an exception basis and require approval from senior electoral management body officials to ensure consistency of service and avoid wasteful additional staffing and emphasis on economy over effective service by local officials.

(For futher information see table 5, staffing to meet specific election needs)

Staffing to Meet Specific Election Needs

The following table5 shows how widely standard staffing varies between jurisdictions and how dependent it is on the specific election environment, particularly in terms of voting procedures and voters' familiarity, and the availability of experienced staff. The examples for Australia and South Africa have the following characteristics:

Both deal with similar numbers of voters in the voting station.

Both are for elections in which voters had to complete two ballot papers--by a single mark in the South African case, and in the Australian case by a choice of a single preference mark or exhaustive preferential numbering on one of the ballot papers and again exhaustive preferential numbering on the other.

Voter identity checks were more rigorous for the South African example, involving production of identity cards and in some cases marking with ink. In the Australian case, voters were simply asked to declare that their claimed identity and address were correct and that they had not previously voted in the election.

In the Australian example, where both voters and officials were experienced in the voting procedures, voters could vote at any voting station in their electoral district, and bank-style queuing was used in which voters were directed to the first available ballot issuing officer in the voting station the South African example, voters and officials were not experienced in the voting procedures used. Most had little experience with voting. Voters were assigned to a single specific voting station, and voters lists were generally split between two, eligibility checking and materials issuing tables divided alphabetically (i.e., A-M, N-Z).