Short-changing the voter

The incoming Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition looks set to introduce potentially far-reaching political reform. The coalition agreement between the two parties includes commitments to: introduce fixed-term parliaments, make provisions to enable voters to recall MPs, equalise the size of constituencies, hold a referendum on the alternative vote for elections to the House of Commons, accelerate the introduction of individual voter registration, and introduce direct elections for the House of Lords, based on proportional representation.

Providing this coalition can last a five-year term, the 2010-15 parliament should therefore bear witness to the most radical electoral reforms for almost a century.

Putting aside the obvious question of how stable a Conservative-Lib Dem coalition will prove to be, there is another challenge facing this radical reform agenda: can our systems of electoral administration actually cope?

Concerns about the state of electoral administration might seem a little prosaic at such an historic moment. But we need only to remind ourselves that, in a number of cities, some polling stations could not cope with a fairly moderate increase in turnout on 6 May, thereby disenfranchising hundreds, possibly thousands, of voters. There were also claims in some areas that polling stations had been supplied with outdated copies of the electoral registers, again disenfranchising hundreds of voters.

As soon as the scale of the problems became evident, the Electoral Commission announced a detailed and urgent review would be undertaken.  The Commission, which regulates but does not run elections, has indicated its report may be published as soon as late May. Over the same period, it is possible that, in constituencies where the margin of victory was small, election petitions will be submitted challenging the outcome.

Both the Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators (AEA) have been warning for some time that the system of electoral administration in Great Britain is ‘close to breaking point’. In 2007, the AEA warned that, had a snap election been called, it could have been ‘the worst in living memory’.  

The AEA were not scaremongering in 2007. A variety of administrative and technical problems have been experienced in recent sub-national elections. There were serious problems with electronic counting at the GLA elections in 2000. Postal ballots were sent to the wrong electoral wards in Hull in 2004. Computer systems crashed during electronic voting pilots in local government elections in Swindon in 2007.  Problems with voters standing in long queues at polling stations were highlighted after local elections in Lancashire and on the Wirral in 2005.

The most notable and widely publicised problems were experienced at the Scottish Parliament and local government elections of 2007. Also the subject of a detailed Electoral Commission review, undertaken by Ron Gould, former head of Elections Canada, the 2007 Scottish elections witnessed problems with the design of ballot papers, the organisation of the count and the failure of the electronic counting system. Gould’s review concluded that ‘the voter had been treated as an afterthought’.

So, what has gone wrong? Without wishing to pre-empt the Commission’s findings, it is likely that many of the causes of Thursday’s chaotic scenes, and some of the other problems we have seen in recent years, are rooted in the combined impact of national reforms aimed at bringing about ‘electoral modernisation’, and attempts by local authorities to bring about efficiency savings.

Since 2000, a series of changes to electoral law have placed electoral administrators under growing pressure. Postal voting had been extended to anyone who requests it. Rolling registration now enables voters to register outside of the annual canvass period, and requires the electoral registers to be updated on a monthly basis.  Applications to register to vote can be submitted up to 11 working days before an election.

Concerns about postal voting fraud have seen requirements placed on electoral administrators to collect ‘personal identifiers’ (signature and date of birth) from anyone applying to vote by post. There is an expectation, although not a legal requirement, that 100 per cent of these personal identifiers will be cross-checked against those submitted when postal ballots are returned.

All of this has been achieved without any real increase in the budgets which electoral administrators have at their disposal. Instead, electoral services departments have often been under intense pressure to identify ways of reducing costs.

Electoral administrators have managed to adapt, but they sometimes did so by cutting corners. In some local authorities, registration levels declined as a result of reduced expenditure on the annual canvass of electors. In other cases, the number of polling stations was reduced, on the assumption that fewer were needed in light of falling turnouts and the take-up of postal ballots.

For instance, in 2006, a working group in Newcastle-upon-Tyne recommended reducing the number of polling stations from 139 to 117, as part of wider measures to produce savings of £18,000.

As the new parliament embarks on a potentially ambitious agenda of democratic reform, MPs must give urgent priority to ensuring that the basics of our democracy are not compromised further. Deep and broad cuts in public expenditure are inevitable during this parliament, and there will be a great deal of special pleading across all service areas. But there is genuinely little to be saved in the administration of elections: the entire cost of registering electors, administering polling and counting votes in Great Britain comes to around £80 million per annum — less than £2 per elector.

Rather more profoundly, there must be very real doubts about whether it will be possible to deliver the much-vaunted, and much-needed, ‘new politics’ without first addressing the worrying state of our essential electoral infrastructure.  

Stuart Wilks-Heeg is executive director of Democratic Audit.