With less than a week to go until the UK General Election, preparations are well under way in Edinburgh. Here are some of the numbers that go into running the election in the Capital’s five constituencies:
143: the number of polling places across the city (buildings in which people vote), which house 336 polling stations, each with one ballot box.
There are five constituencies in Edinburgh: Edinburgh East, Edinburgh North and Leith, Edinburgh South, Edinburgh South West and Edinburgh West.
22 candidates are standing across the five constituencies, representing 6 different parties.
There are 352,600 people registered to vote in Edinburgh, with 79,963 of these postal voters. This is an increase of 8.3% in postal voters compared to the local elections on 4 May (74,481) and the highest number of postal voters since the Scottish Independence Referendum in 2014 (81,666).
As of Tuesday 30 May, Edinburgh has had 33.1% of all the postal votes returned.
3000 books of ballot papers will be used by polling staff on 8 June.
More than 3600 pencils will be available and attached to polling stations using a total of 360 balls of string (more than two miles in length) – though voters do not have to use pencil and can bring their own pens.
745 polling staff will make sure voting runs smoothly in Edinburgh during the day on 8 June, while 510 count staff will count the city’s votes that night.
There is one mobile polling place in Edinburgh, the mobile library, which is parked at Forrester Park Avenue.
Amongst the equipment used across polling places during the day will be approximately 300 yellow post-its, 150 black bin bags, 84 sets of pliers and 500 fingerettes.
While 16 and 17-year-olds were able to vote in the Scottish Referendum and the recent local elections, voters must be 18 to take part in the General Election.
More numbers still…
At the recent Scottish Local Government Elections on 4 May 2017, Edinburgh had more postal votes returned – 55,056 – than any other council in Scotland. Edinburgh also had more votes to count 187,157 than any other of the 32 councils.
Edinburgh counts for around 9% of Scotland’s electorate – second most behind Glasgow.
Sweet spot: count staff will eat around 2800 boiled sweets on the night of 8 June.
Edinburgh uses cardboard polling booths – they are recyclable and save over £5000 in repair and maintenance costs for each election.
Polls open at 7am on 8 June and close at 10pm.
Find out more about when, where and how to vote.
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