Who counts the votes, and how to get inside a polling station
A polling station is staffed by citizens drawn from a register their comune keeps, and it is the parties themselves who watch them. How it works, and how to be there.
Who is inside a polling station?
Six people: a president, four scrutineers — one of whom the president picks as deputy — and a secretary.
None of them is a civil servant. They are electors like anybody else, drawn from two different registers and appointed by two different authorities, and that separation is the first safeguard.
Source: Art. 34, d.P.R. 361/1957
Who appoints whom
You join the register of scrutineers: you have to be an elector of that comune and to have completed compulsory schooling, and nothing else. The comune keeps it and publishes its deadline, and at each election the municipal electoral commission picks the names from it.
Source: Law 8 March 1989, no. 95
The register of presiding officers is a different list, kept at the Court of Appeal, and the appointment is signed by its President. The comune does not appear anywhere in this column.
The polling station is made up of six people: a president, four scrutineers — one of whom the president picks as deputy — and a secretary. None of them is a civil servant: they are electors like anybody else.
Source: Art. 34, d.P.R. 361/1957
List representatives come from neither register and are appointed by no public authority: the lists name them. They have the right to attend every operation of the office, not only the count, and to have their statements entered in the record.
Source: Artt. 25 and 26, d.P.R. 361/1957
How do you become a scrutineer?
By joining your comune’s register of scrutineers. You have to be an elector of that comune and to have completed compulsory schooling: nothing else.
You apply to the comune, which keeps the register and publishes the deadline. At each election the municipal electoral commission picks names from it — you do not apply for one election, you join the register and stay on it.
Source: Law 8 March 1989, no. 95
And the president of the polling station?
A different register, kept at the Court of Appeal, and the appointment is made by its President.
The two appointments are kept apart deliberately: whoever presides is not chosen by the same body that chooses whoever counts.
Is it paid?
Yes. The fee is fixed by law, and differs between the president and a scrutineer.
The current amount is published by the comune alongside the register’s deadline. We do not reproduce it here: it changes, and a wrong figure on a page like this is worth less than no figure.
Who checks that the count is right?
The parties themselves. Every list may designate two representatives at each polling station, one serving and one substitute.
They have the right to attend every operation of the electoral office — not only the count — and to have their statements entered in the record. An objection written into the record is what any later challenge is built on.
It is scrutiny by the competitors rather than by an outside authority: the people with opposite interests are in the same room, signing the same record.
Source: Artt. 25 and 26, d.P.R. 361/1957
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