Electoral Commission’s guidance for tellers in the European referendum

What tellers can and cannot do is often a cause of friction on polling day. So here in full is the Electoral Commission’s guidance. It does not have the force of law, but in practice if there is a problem with elections staff trying to be far too restrictive over telling, quoting this guidance almost always sorts things. (I put it that way round, as being too restrictive is almost always the problem.)

In particular note the old favourite issue of the appearance of tellers:

Tellers should wear coloured rosettes of a reasonable size, as this assists electors by making it clear that they are activists and not electoral officials. The rosette may display the name of the referendum campaigner or answer to the referendum question, but it should not bear a slogan and must not be oversized.

Tellers must not wear, carry or display any headwear, footwear or other apparel that carries any writing, picture or sign relating to any referendum campaigner apart from a rosette.

That last provision was not always in this guidance, leading to a cunning / mad / both plan which was nearly carried out in one by-election to equip all the Lib Dem tellers with T-shirts with a barchart on them.