"They should be told to clear off. They pretend to be part of the proceedings here, asking for the voter number/name and calling it out to the actual polling station staff inside. What they are doing is recording who votes and who doesn't."
I agree, but I would tend to be a little less polite. The people are 'tellers' and they are allowed to be there, but are subject to restrictions. I work as a Presiding Officer at elections, though only at a quiet rural village - we tend not to have sufficient activity to cause tellers to turn up but, if they did, I would make sure that they knew where they stood.
I used to work in the chemical industry where my last boss was a Frenchman seconded over here for a few years. He lived locally so we invited him and his wife to join us at the polling station (this was before I became involved in the process); he was legally allowed to vote in one or two aspects of the poll.
He was disgusted by the presence of tellers and the degree of razzamatazz on display and peeled away from the queue for us to join him later at the pub. Apparently, in France, elections are held on Sundays; they are very sober affairs with all 'electioneering' terminated by law at midnight before the day of the poll. That is certainly something that I would prefer to happen here.
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