Polling Day tech: What you need to know
To see all the help articles in one place, visit our Polling day section on help.labour.org.uk here. If you have any questions, get in touch at [email protected].
Starting from now
Make sure your Polling Stations are up to date in Contact Creator
These polling stations will show up in the Telling app, and on Doorstep or your paper WARP sheets.
You should have a comprehensive list from your local authority. If you want to check specific postcodes you can use the service wheredoivote.co.uk which collects data nationwide.
Read the Contact Creator guide on polling stations
Set up your Polling Day Campaign Centre Events in Organise
You should try and set up each of your campaign centres before polling day to maximise options for volunteers to get involved.
Mark one campaign centre as the “Primary Campaign Centre” when you create it, or you can go back and edit it – this is where we will direct tellers and any volunteers who we sign up nationally.
Read the Organise guide on campaign centre events
Promote Polling Day events to potential volunteers
To focus on Polling Day mobilisation send people to your events on pollingday.labour.org.uk (although they can also sign up in the normal Events site).
You can either share a link to your Primary Campaign Centre, do an “Area search” to get a page showing all your campaign centres, or just send them to the homepage to enter their postcode.
Sign up Tellers
If you know people who would be more interested in telling, particularly if they are less able to go out canvassing, you can share your pre-made Telling event from tellingsignup.labour.org.uk (Telling events won’t appear on the main Events site).
While tellers don’t need to sign up beforehand, if they do we will send them details about training and what to expect, as well as reminding them on the day with a login link to the Telling app.
We will be promoting telling to volunteers, so check in your Organise campaign to see how many are signing up.
Prepare for the day on Polling Week
Export your MTV voter selections from Contact Creator
You should be using the MTV (Maximise the Vote) WARP reports from Monday of polling week up until polls close. See the diagram below for our recommended report based on your seat.
When using these quick reports, make sure to go back to Step 1 and select “Export report to Doorstep” before you create it so you can use the Doorstep app.
Read the full Contact Creator guide on MTV selections
Print off your coversheets and prepare lanyards
With every Doorstep session you will receive a PDF with lots of coversheets for every roadgroup. These will also show the supergroup for this roadgroup if you’ve set them up in Contact Creator.
We’ve made these easy to fold in half and put in a plastic sleeve on a lanyard. This is the best way for boardrunners to have easy access to a map and the login code for Doorstep.
Set up your Polling Day Dashboard
We’ve created a new dashboard if you are using Doorstep on polling day at pollingdaydash.labour.org.uk. You need to be a Labour staff member to access the main site, but individual constituency pages can be shared with non-staff organisers in those seats. If you have issues with access, email [email protected].
To see activity split across your campaign centres and get specific dashboards for each, you will have to create them as separate events in Organise (if you started with just a placeholder event).
Click “Configure Constituency” in the top right to assign wards to these campaign centres. You can then click through to the campaign centre page to just see the roadgroups assigned to it. You can share links to campaign centre dashboards with the volunteers running them on the day.
Read the full guide on Polling Day Dashboard
Move volunteers around in Organise
Turn on “Polling Day Mode” while on your Organise campaign to see just the people who have signed up for polling day activities.
If you want to balance volunteers out before the day, you can reassign them using “Update Campaign Centre” on their row on the Polling Day Volunteers table. This will change the reminder emails they get to point them to the new location, or if you sign them up for Telling, they will get training information and a login link.
Read the full guide on Organise Polling Day mode
Add Cars to Insurance
In order to drive volunteers around in private cars, the car and driver need to be added onto the party’s additional insurance for the campaign (this doesn’t replace your regular car insurance).
If you are staff, a local roleholder, or an organise user, you can submit cars and drivers using the form at carinsurance.labour.org.uk. All you need is the drivers name, and the car make/model and registration.
Insurance is valid immediately, so you can add new drivers and cars on polling day.
On Polling Day
Tellers arrive
Tellers who sign up online will come to your Primary Campaign Centre. Give them a rosette, sticker or badge, and a quick briefing on how to do telling.
We are working on adding a priority list of Polling Stations to Polling Day Dash, but you can use the priority roadgroups as a sign for where their help will be most useful. You may need to help Tellers with lifts.
We have a new Telling app for them to use at the polling station that will be available at telling.labour.org.uk on polling day – its linked up with Doorstep so voters will be marked off on the doors automatically if they’ve voted.
Tellers who sign up before hand will have a log in link. If they’ve lost it, or they just come on the day, you can give them a 6-digit login code for your seat which you will find on Polling Day Dash.
We’re working on a new guide for the Telling app but it will look very similar to the one we used for local elections in May. You can see the guide for that here.
Doorknocking volunteers arrive – prioritise activity using Polling Day Dash
Volunteers should arrive to the campaign centre they are assigned to, or to the Primary Campaign Centre.
Use Polling Day Dash to see which roadgroups to send them to. We’ve ordered these by their priority and how many voters are left to talk to, but there’s no substitute for local knowledge so just use this as a guide.
We also show you when the last contact was made, and if we think there is an active round collecting data, so you can easily see the roadgroup that needs the most attention.
Hand out your lanyards/cover sheets with the Doorstep login codes to the boardrunner, and if they haven’t used it before give them a quick briefing on how the app works.