In developing voting station staffing plans, a contingency factor should be included in the number of staff that need to be recruited to replace staff staff who drop out.
In establishing the required levels of contingency staff, consideration needs to be given to all relevant factors that may cause staff to be unavailable, including:
• personal emergencies;
• transport failures;
• unsuitability for voting station duties established during training;
• sickness or fatigue experienced during voting day.
It may also be necessary to recruit contingency staff to accommodate unexpectedly high voter turnouts at specific voting locations, depending on how flexible voting systems are with regard to voter’s choice of voting station and the percentage voter turnout basis for initial staffing allocations.
Numbers of Contingency Staff Required
The numbers of contingency staff required will vary according to environment. Previous electoral history may be some guide, but this is not necessarily relevant where there have been major changes to election systems or political environments. In stable systems, contingency reserves may only be needed at the level of one staff member to around eight to ten voting stations.
In less stable systems, where there are new participants in the voting processes and difficulties in recruiting staff with high base level skills, this may rise to as much as one or two reserve staff for each voting station. Voting operations budgets must allow for costs related to contingency staff, e.g., fees, training, and logistics support costs.
Location of Contingency Staff
On voting day contingency staff would generally be best assigned to report to the regional or local election administration office, rather than to individual voting locations. The regional or local administration office will assign then where they are needed. This may need to be varied in more remote areas and where reliable emergency transport is not available to all voting locations.
It may also be better to assign reserve staff to the voting station location in environments where general public communication systems are poor or where history or current circumstances indicates the likelihood of significant levels of failure to report for duty by voting station officials.
Generic Voting Station Officials
Contingency staff are more cost-effectively recruited at the base voting station official level. Contingency staff should generally be treated in the same way as other voting station officials.
They should all receive the same training, and where required to report for duty on voting day, be paid at least a retainer as a voting station official, even if not required to work. Contingency staff may cost-effectively be used for other localised tasks if not required for voting station duties on voting day--for example, administrative assistance in operations centres, accompanying roving voting station officials as runners, or assisting with emergency materials control.
Voting Station Managers and Senior Voting Station Officials
Contingency staffing arrangements for voting station managers do not necessarily need to involve the recruitment of staff specifically for voting station management positions. Structuring voting station staff profiles so that there is a designated deputy in each voting station will provide a replacement in case of management drop-outs.
This could require some reassignment between neighbouring voting stations. These staff can then be replaced in their original positions from the pool of reserve voting station officials. To cover for such contingencies, staff occupying designated second-in-charge or deputy manager positions will be more effective if provided with the same level of training as voting station managers.
The appointment of senior voting operations officials as roving first-line supervisors or troubleshooters for voting stations within particular geographic areas may provide some contingency reserve for voting station managers. The appropriateness of this will be more limited in rural areas with low population density.
Additionally, if these roving officials are used as replacement voting station managers, there will be a loss of more general first-line supervisory capacities.
