Guineveretoo
Mostly bewildered
I didn't mean to! I love being able to share my knowledge with people. It is rare that I know more than anyone else about anything, but I have been running polling stations for, literally, decades, so it is one area in which I am a bit of a hands-on expert!It was mainly OU, but TBH you sounded a little irritated or defensive too (I wasn't disparaging the people doing the count), but it might just be my interpretation.
I think it's also partly that including the verification as an extra day still doesn't really explain it, because it's been done quicker before when there have been more votes to count even when it was also counted manually. The explanation seems to be it just was done this way this time, and that's that.
I can't really explain the counting thing either, as that is not my expertise, but I do know that one of my poll clerks was being picked up by coach at 6am the day after polling day, to do two days of counting.
The fact that a whole day was set aside for verification is simply that there were three main ballot papers to sort and verify, and across the whole of London. So, a LOT of papers. And there were council by-elections in some areas as well, which had to be separated and verified/counted as well.
I also know that what they call "verifications" is part of the counting process. I have only done the counting twice, and neither of those were in the last few years.
I am really sorry if I came across as being irritated, though - it is kind of the opposite, so I am clearly not using my words well.