Vote counting for SSM survey being done by a private company - my old work (video)

Well well well. I suspected so but this is the first confirmation I've seen. The postal survey is being done by my old work that I was at for thirteen and a half years, before they canned the whole Print dept and outsourced it. About ten or of us (or "units" as we were described) were made redundant.

I joined the company when it was HPA and in Erskineville. Not long after it moved head office to Matraville, which suited me fine as it was much closer to home for me. That plant I worked at for the remainder of the 13 years I was employed with them. During that time they were bought out by Salmat in a friendly takeover, and not long after my redundancy they were bought by Fuji Xerox. Not long after that they closed the Matraville plant and merged it with their Moorebank plant, making that the new head office. Website here.

Of course because of the sensitive mailing (bills, statements, etc) everyone is required to sign a confidentiality agreement. Those odd people who breached that agreement were summarily fired. All fair enough.

As it's such a big mailing house I suspected it would be one of the few in Australia that could handle a 16 million run through the laser and mailing machines. The Handline dept would be the one doing the counting; a whole dept of people sitting at tables doing handline stuff, like opening letters and counting votes. No doubt Handline has a large number of casuals bought in for this. Yes, my human rights in the hands of casuals 😕

Some might question the vote being done by a private company, but I'd say that it's all pretty safe with this one. Strange though that a vote about my human rights is now being counted by my old work. Many of the Handline staff there would know me. 

Observers tasked with maintaining the integrity of the same-sex marriage postal survey count are subject to a confidentiality agreement that bans them from ever speaking about it publicly. 


Vote counting for Australia’s voluntary non-binding same-sex marriage postal survey is under way at a Fuji Xerox office in Moorebank in Sydney’s south-west. 


But representatives from the yes and no campaigns who are observing the counting are powerless to challenge disputed survey responses, and face prosecution if they speak out about irregularities in the process. 


Guardian Australia has obtained copies of the confidentiality deed that all observers are required to sign, as well as guidelines that spell out their role assuring “the integrity of the count”. Guardian  

Video below has a lot of little clips of the process going on. I've probably used some of those blue stack trolleys myself. Small world.