Postal votes hit 4000

We're in the finishing straight. 48 hours from now and the count will be about to start. The last couple of days have been a mixture of continuing to process postal votes and preparing for election day.

Postal votes first. About 4,000 so far and we reckon another thousand to go. Everybody, staff and counting agents got fed up this morning as our computer equipment played up and everything slowed down. Fortunately we found what the problem was and hopefully tomorrow everything will be back to normal. No major problems - we found the vote that had been thrown away with the emptied envelopes, for example. At least this shows that our checking processes work!

Polling stations are all lined up and the ballot boxes are ready. There's 78 in all -we have 78 polling stations in about 70 locations. This is because some locations have more than one polling station. the boxes get picked up tomorrow so the council offices will be a hive of activity as presiding officers come and go.

Finally the count. Everything in running this election is important but getting the count right is probably top of the list. We've never used Thame Leisure Centre before so there's an element of the unknown but we're planning as best we can. The first main issue is going to be getting the cars with ballot boxes down the drive without being held up. We have Thames Valley Police working with us on traffic control so hopefully everything will go smoothly. I'm told that at the recent Crewe by-election Cheshire police set up a cordon round the count, including an armed response unit. We're a bit more laid back in Oxfordshire obviously - we have two police officers and two PCSOs on duty on the night.

Tomorrow I'll run through some of the other things that we need to get right on the night including, of course, the result.

From: Henley Acting Returning Officer