In the UK, voting for General Elections is a big voluntary community affair and a lot of fun is had by making it a race.

How it all works is you put yourself on the electoral roll and then you receive a polling card telling you precisely which polling station you are registered with. The polling station will be walking distance from your home and serves several hundred people only.

When you arrive, a number of local community volunteers operate the station. One person checks your name whilst a second verifies it and marks you as having received a ballot. You mark your ballot with a soft nosed pencil and drop it in a ballot box that has a security seal.

(If for some reason you are not listed on the electoral roll but show some form of address proving you are in the right location, they have a procedure to take all of your details and a warning that you can face prison for voting illegally, then they give you a pink ballot which will only be used if the race is too close to comfortably call and after an investigation)

When the polls close, the ballot box is rushed (and they have races to see who can do this the fastest) to the local constituency counting station which again is manned by many dozens of community volunteers. The box seals are broken under supervision from all party representatives and the number of ballots (not votes) is counted to ensure it matches the records that came with it from the polling station.

Once the correct number of ballots is confirmed, the ballots are distributed to the many volunteer counters who begin working on the actual vote count. The first results will come in withing a few hours with the final constituency result usually being declared around 10am the following morning.

One final point is that although voting is anonymous, when you are given your ballot paper in the polling station, they will write on the ballot what number voter you are of the day and that same number is logged against your name on the voting record. This is a safety precaution, in that, should fraud be alleged, there is a way to go back and match ballots to voters, but to my knowledge this has never been used and the ballots and voting records are never matched.

In the UK, voting for General Elections is a big voluntary community affair and a lot of fun is had by making it a race.

How it all works is you put yourself on the electoral roll and then you receive a polling card telling you precisely which polling station you are registered with. The polling station will be walking distance from your home and serves several hundred people only.

When you arrive, a number of local community volunteers operate the station. One person checks your name whilst a second verifies it and marks you as having received a ballot. You mark your ballot with a soft nosed pencil and drop it in a ballot box that has a security seal.

(If for some reason you are not listed on the electoral roll but show some form of address proving you are in the right location, they have a procedure to take all of your details and a warning that you can face prison for voting illegally, then they give you a pink ballot which will only be used if the race is too close to comfortably call and after an investigation)

When the polls close, the ballot box is rushed (and they have races to see who can do this the fastest) to the local constituency counting station which again is manned by many dozens of community volunteers. The box seals are broken under supervision from all party representatives and the number of ballots (not votes) is counted to ensure it matches the records that came with it from the polling station.

Once the correct number of ballots is confirmed, the ballots are distributed to the many volunteer counters who begin working on the actual vote count. The first results will come in withing a few hours with the final constituency result usually being declared around 10am the following morning.

One final point is that although voting is anonymous, when you are given your ballot paper in the polling station, they will write what number voter you are of the day and the same number is logged against your name on the voting record. This is a safety precaution, in that, should fraud be alleged, there is a way to go back and match ballots to voters, but to my knowledge this has never been used and the ballots and voting records are never matched.