With England, Scotland and Wales going to the polls last week, local councils faced a major challenge to manage a labour intensive, paper-based system in the time of a major public health crisis For the first time, 30 local authorities in more that 1500 polling stations gave around 2 million voters access to Modern Democracy’s Digital Poll Clerk – incredible technology that’s revolutionising poll station management and processing of voters across the UK. With over 20 years’ experience delivering innovative election solutions, the Northern Ireland based company developed Digital Poll Clerk, a solution to bring the polling station into the Digital age. Their revolutionary technology provides a digital register at the Poll Station and automates the check in process, helping many local councils to process voters up to four times faster, with more efficiency and fewer touch points, thus minimising risk for both voter and poll station staff. With realtime information on voter turnout, the Digital Poll Clerk gives visibility of all poll stations on election day.
Having the capacity and capability to manage multiple combined elections, the Digital Poll Clerk transforms what is somethimes a multiple headache into a simple, straightforward process by finding voters on the digital register faster, issuing ballots faster and automating the Corresponding Number List and Ballot Paper Account, so ensuring 100% accuracy.
Modern Democracy’s technology is the leader in this area and dominates the market. Over the last five years, the company has been working on refining the Modern Poll Clerk, scaling up and working with the Cabinet Office and their customers to ensure this cloud based product is secure, reliable, easy to deploy and user friendly. At a recent webinar a customer, who has used the Digital Poll Clerk said: “We wanted to provide electors with a slick and modern experience and to reduce potential for error, particularly when marking off the electoral register. The Digital Poll Clerk simplifies the end of day process with an automatic, correct ballot count – that means less stress for the Presiding Officer. They just have to press a button, close the polling station and bring the ballot boxes and paperwork back to the count centre. “In terms of meeting the challenges presented by COVID-19, we can rotate staff better, and there’s also less contact between staff with voters, enabling social distancing. “It’s a much more modern way of running the polling station, making everything more efficient and simpler. The future’s likely to see the implementation of voter ID, and if we’re required to capture that information, this system will make that quick and easy.” Modern Democracy’s CEO, Siobhan Donaghy said: “Any kind of election delivery is labour intensive and stressful for local authority teams. Throughout this pandemic we’ve been having conversations with current and potential local authority partners, particularly around minimising staff numbers and minimising queuing time for voters on election day, which is key to mitigating risk for everyone at the polling station.” “This is an exciting journey for Modern Democracy, we have scaled up massively to deploy a streamlined, modern election process to voters and while we encountered some expected challenges last week, overall we outperformed our own expectations and delivered for our customers.” Chairman Brian Reid added: “Change can be daunting, but I’m delighted that our local authority clients have shown the ambition and confidence to work with our team and embrace the challenge and enjoy the benefits that digital transformation can bring. “I’m incredibly proud of the Modern Democracy team. We’ve built a lot of success, secured a market-leading position and we have even bigger ambitions to expand our market share.”