Though flawed, our own Liberal Democrat Eynesbury By-election Day ran from our Luke Street committee room was far superior to our party-political opponents as we had tellers at the three polling stations and volunteers ‘knocking up’ electors and offering lifts. Therefore our candidate was easily elected!
I do not think that I have ever had an election day that had been easy but this was one of the most difficult of the lot. For a start, it was another very hot and humid day.
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Not the hottest this year (which had been exceptional) but quite close. Then the ward of Eynesbury is now an oversized sprawling pig of a place with 6,700 electors and three polling stations.
A substantial section of the population live in poorly-ventilated multi-storey blocks of flats and they, and many of their other neighbours, share a deep cynicism and mistrust of politics and politicians and the rest just never bother to vote with apathy the biggest obstacle of all.
The absence of polling cards to even inform them of the poll and call them out on the day meant that it was all down to us. On the other hand, our opponents were even more daunted by this prospect. The Conservatives (who last won the seat) did not even manage to produce a leaflet; their candidate getting badly stung on the hand by wasps and then finding out she was pregnant once nominated.
Labour had an uninspiring candidate who listed his pursuits as "the occasional game of darts" and, with few helpers, struggled to deliver one leaflet which took them most of the campaign and even then, they had not managed all of it. They canvassed little and then had a poor polling day organisation with only one polling station manned.
At least we had got round 90-95% of the ward with a good canvas, had identified our support and helped most of these voters along by giving them their polling numbers and delivering an early-morning leaflet to remind them that this was the day. It was that task that we had to get organised first.
I was up at 5.15am like the other early deliverers but I managed to persuade Robin Martlew to come over and take on my leaflet round. This let me collect the 4/86 computer from Wiggly and then stay at our Luke Street to organise the committee room with the priority to ensure that all of the good morning's had been delivered by crossing the rounds off as the deliverers reported in.
Then I shared the task with Wiggly of rushing over to each polling station and checking that our first tellers had, not only turned up on time with their tools, but were also coping with the onerous task of identifying each voter in the absence of polling cards. In the event, quite a number of them came clutching our slips with their numbers on and the turnout was so abysmal (with just a couple of voters at each station in the first half hour and around 11% of those eligible all day overall), that our tellers had ample time to use the register copies to identify most of the rest.
I had very few people to help me in the morning and then the computer programs and database was giving trouble again. For some reason, the new version of the EARS 6.35 left us with no Shuttleworth Filter so that computer took all the electors as being ours. Then the data base itself was corrupted for statistical purposes in a complicated combination.
Mark Rainer stayed on with me all morning after his early delivery and tried to help without success so that eventually I took the decision to regress to EARS 6.0 which, although the data errors could potentially compromise the statistics, managed (as was proved in a test) to correctly keep a tally of those voting so that the Shuttleworth knock-up lists would be valid.
All the morning had passed but the size of the ward and the absence of any other able helpers, apart from Wiggly and Joanne, meant that the initial "Our Pensioners" printouts were sufficient to keep such "Knockers-Up" occupied until we had got the data processing online and the tellers lists re-entered.
More helpers pitched in after lunch and, as we chased others by telephone all the time, the tempo ramped up in the evening until, at one point, we had a dozen people knocking-up and telling numbers coming back on fifteen-minute cycles. The heat took its toll and conditions in our poll cars were very testing.
Wiggly got my car keys from me and took over my Discovery for the afternoon; with its air conditioning helping the lifts for old ladies etc.! The weather was so nice, it was keeping people at home in the shade but gradually as the day cooled and our cumulative call-out efforts showed our enthusiasm and determination and the crowds converged on the polling stations. I kept the effort going until around 8.40pm after which the helpers came back to Luke Street for refreshment.
Then most of them drove over to Ernulf to see the count and it soon became apparent from the samples that Wiggly had won by a good margin. She received over 400 votes, 200 ahead of Labour with the Tories in a very poor third place. All off to the pub to celebrate after which, with the "Busby Babes" obviously merry having drunk two pints of lager each, I had the task of getting their help printing and sticking "We Won -Thank You" slips onto our flagboards.
I had to buy them a takeaway Chinese meal as they had been drinking on empty stomachs and we ended up out at 1.00am in the morning pasting these slips up with me driving and them dancing around with the paste bucket showing no sign of their long day that started before 6.00am the previous morning! As I left them at the end of the evening, Wiggly lingered and seemed to want a kiss but I resisted in view of the likely outcome.