political drama

In the last minute, I was offered a position, by the AEC, as an Official Polling Assistant at Lansvale East Public School  on polling day. The pay was good but of course you'd have to work for it. I brought a pillow but I didn't use it at all since I was assigned to different jobs. There wasn't just one job to do; I had to look after the ballot boxes, mark people off the lists, and there was counting the citizens and assigning them to one of the three tables but I didn't get to do that one. 

Looking after the ballot boxes was easy but tiring since there's no chair for you to sit on. The marking job provided you a chair but I think it was more intense because there were so many names to look through and it was your obligation to mark off the right person. Also, if the citizens was having a bad day, you'd be the first to experience their anger. I made one mistake when marking names off. 

A man came in and told me his name, but apparently he had the exact same name as his son except he had an extra middle name. I accidentally marked off his son instead of him. Thank God his son came later so I was able to mark off the father's name instead since his name was already marked off. So in the end, it was all good. 

Although there were many votes and Senate ballots were extremely long, I had the most fun counting the votes. Well, not exactly the unfolding part, but the counting part. At our polling location, for House of Representatives Liberals and Labor were pretty close; Labor won by just 10 votes, literally. One of the older workers said that it was the first time he's seen such a small difference between the parties. Unfortunately, he also said that there were much more donkey votes than he's ever seen. I felt bad because those donkey votes could've made a huge difference between the parties if they were counted. For once, I thought politics was exciting, seeing how close the votes were. I even stayed up at home that night to check how the numbers were for the seats. That night, it was 72 Labor and 71 Liberal. As you know now, Liberal's in the lead now. Apparently, it was the first hung parliament since post WWII *gasps*!

We spent hours counting and recounting the votes to make sure that there were no mistakes and that the votes balanced out with the number of people who entered the polling place. Apparently, there were 10 votes missing. I'm not completely sure why but things happen, like people accidentally bringing their ballots with them, or accidentally chucking in the bin, etc. 

It was a long day; from 7:30AM to 10:30AM, so about 15 hours. Since the pay was a certain amount, no matter how much longer I stayed after the polling, I wasn't going to get an O.T. double rate. So thankfully, I only stayed behind for 3 more hours. Unfortunately, some places had to stay back til 1:00AM to recount the votes over and over again to make sure it balanced.

It was a tiring day, but I'm willing to try again for next year's State elections =). I wonder, if they really can't decide which party would run the government, and that we'd have to vote again, would I get hired again and get paid the same amount again? I wouldn't mind if that happened =D.