In praise of… tellers

As you climb bleary-eyed from bed this morning, spare a thought – and a vote of thanks – for the 50,000 men and women who worked half the night or more to allow you to fall asleep with an idea of the result of the election, even if it wasn't the result you hoped for. Despite the complication of having to verify thousands of postal votes, and the sheer numbers of candidates and ballot papers – particularly where there were local elections too – almost all English constituencies should have been able to declare by breakfast time in what local councils were hoping would be a new record. All this only months after the Association of Electoral Administrators strongly suggested overnight counts would be impossible in the context of the new obligations placed on staff by changed electoral rules, including potential health and safety issues such as causing an accident on the way home. In a memorandum that might have been composed by Sir Humphrey at his most obstructive, the association clearly thought Friday counts were a safer bet. But that was to discount voter enthusiasm for an all-nighter, and the willingness of the thousands of casual workers on whom councils rely to sacrifice their eight hours' sleep to be part of something that is always important, and seemed likely last night to be a watershed. Democracy is the aggregation of an expression of individual preference, made possible by the aggregation of individual effort – reinforced by individual willingness to make a small sacrifice.