[realityking]

I can only talk about Germany. Election helpers are sourced from the population of the community where the vote is held. (You can be compelled to do it if there are not enough volunteers), at least two election helpers have to be with the urn at any time. Anybody is permitted to stay in the room from the moment it's checked that the ballot box is empty until the vote result is announced. The vote itself is made in a way that loudly announces each individual count.

Afterwards the result from every polling station is posted online. So if you want, you can make sure your vote is accounted.

Now I'v been an election helper since 2009, I've never seen anybody stick around for the vote. It's mainly the election helpers keeping each other in check.

[gpvos]

Last time with the European Parliament elections in the Netherlands, there was a small uproar because the elections were held on Thursday (all other elections here are held on Wednesday), but the results could not be announced until Saturday or Sunday because most other European countries held their elections then. However, keeping the final result undercover for a few days is actually against Dutch election rules.

So, a critical web site organized a nationwide system where people could sign up for their polling station, to stay around during the counting and then report the results back to the web site. They got about 70% coverage I think; in the large cities it was near 100%. It was quite interesting. It was a close vote, and their result was slightly off, but close.

I am considering to alternate each election between being an official election helper and unofficial self-appointed monitor.

[realityking]

The European Elections provide some interesting challenges, my favorite being people who, apparently unaware that it's illegal, vote twice: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/26/us-eu-election-ger...