Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40
- 59)
TUESDAY 2 JUNE 1998
PROFESSOR ROBERT
BLACKBURN AND
DR DAVID
BUTLER
40. Obviously detailed statistics are going
to be difficult but what proportion of the entitled population
which is currently correctly on the register is at the correct
address?
(Dr Butler) Again, it has been very interesting that
the error rate when they last did it was eight per cent roughly.
But the actual number on the register was roughly right. There
were about eight per cent of dead names or duplicate names and
about eight per cent of omitted names as far as they could make
out by comparing it with the census data. There were one or two
extra factors. 1991 was confused by the poll tax and the census
was probably about one per cent out because of people trying to
avoid registration because of the poll tax and the register went
down two or three per cent by people not wanting to get on the
register, not believing in the Chinese wall that was supposed
to exist between the electoral register and the poll tax register.
There was a certain distortion there but that, I gather, has been
winnowed out of the system. You do start with something like that
number of people who are there. You also have the problem of legitimate
and illegitimate duplicate registration of students being registered
at their university and at home and owners of country cottages
being registered at both places. Interestingly, they did enlarge
the postal vote arrangements so that if you have a country cottage
and you think it is a vital seat you can vote from your country
cottage. It is very difficult to actually check that people do
not vote personally, even assuming they are honest. It should
have increased the postal vote but it did not, the postal vote
has stayed pretty well constant, about 800,000 to 900,000 postal
votes have been cast in about each of the last four or five elections.
41. Is that discrepancy a cause for concern
or is it inevitable?
(Dr Butler) It is the sort of thing that an Electoral
Commission would put fairly low down its priorities but it is
one of the things that I think it should monitor. I think you
want an efficient electoral register so that you get high turnout,
you do not get people unable to vote because they have been inadvertently
left off. Some of the people who are left off are people who would
not vote anyway or are among the people least likely to vote.
In 1950 and 1951 we had 84 and 82 per cent turnouts, the highest
turnouts recorded since full adult suffrage has come in. That
was due because of the registration system for rationing. If you
have rationing you have got to have registration and this meant
that the register was much more efficient. At that stage they
wanted to have an efficient register. The 1948 Act provided for
two registers a year and once there was an economic crisis in
1950 one of the first cuts was to change from two registers a
year to one register a year. There is now talk about changing,
which again the electoral administrators will talk about, to rolling
registers and the like, a means of making the register a hell
of a lot better than it currently is.
42. Is there any evidence to show that certain
groups of people are under-represented on the register?
(Dr Butler) Yes. Again, that comes very strongly from
the studies linked to the census. As I suggested earlier, if you
are a young black in the East End you have got a 50 per cent chance
of being on the register at 18 whereas if you are a nice middle
class chap in a country constituency you have got a 90 per cent
chance or a 95 per cent chance of being registered. If you are
a middle aged person in a country constituency you have got about
a 98 per cent chance of being registered. There is a very wide
variation.
43. When you say a chance of being registered,
is it not a duty which can be punishable by law?
(Dr Butler) It is a duty punishable by law. I am not
aware of the exact penalties of the law but one gets one's form
saying you are required and it is an Act of Parliament that you
should fill in the form on 10 October each year and if you do
not do it there are the follow-ups. I think there are virtually
negligible prosecutions. Incidentally, if I could just mention
this (it is slightly digressing), I tried to get from the Home
Office the other day the number of people who were prosecuted
for electoral offences and they said they had no data. I could
go to the Royal Courts of Justice if I liked but they were very
much behind on their statistics. We do not know. If you have Home
Office people here or lawyers I do beg you to tease them about
actually getting solid information about the extent to which people
are prosecuted for impersonation and the like. On the whole we
do obey the law but there is certainly a great deal more impersonation
than there are prosecutions, just as there is a good deal more
over-spending than there are election petitions.
44. Just coming back to my original point when
we were talking about compulsory voting, is it time we were applying
sanctions to people who are not on the register in a much more
systematic way than we are?
(Professor Blackburn) I think what reinforces what
I have been saying about the fact that people would comply with
compulsory voting applies to voter registration. Really the level
of voter registration is extremely successful in terms of the
fact that it is not draconianly enforced. It is very gently enforced,
there are hardly any prosecutions. There may be certain people
who do not fill in their forms but a judicious blind eye is turned
to it.
45. The consequences of not enforcing it is
certain groups are under-represented on the register.
(Professor Blackburn) You try to persuade those groups
that it is in their best interests and in everybody else's best
interests if they do register.
46. Can we look at improvements to the register.
Registration Officers have an incredible amount of discretion
over how to compile the register. Is there any good practice around
that is circulated to other local authorities? What good techniques
do you think may be underused at present, if any?
(Professor Blackburn) I do not have detailed knowledge
of that but I think it is a bit of an exaggeration to say they
have that much discretion. They do compare notes with one another.
It is quite clear that extra efforts have been made in the last
ten years or more to be more diligent in increasing the level
of voter participation. The Home Office, of course, does issue
guidelines of good practice.
(Dr Butler) I do think you would get so much more
out of the electoral administrators and the Home Office people
than us. They have been doing it and I think the Howarth Committee
is looking at it too at the moment.
47. One idea is to pay canvassers by results.
Is that a method which you would prefer or are there any dangers
in that method?
(Dr Butler) It has been discussed. I am a member nominally
through the Hansard Society, of the Association of Electoral Administrators
and I get their leaflets and there have been articles in this
territory. I am sure they will tell you that they are very eager
to improve their operations and are willing to talk about it.
(Professor Blackburn) I think that is an interesting
idea which you might put to the local authority registration officers
and see if it appeals to them in the circumstances of their local
community. This is something that might be acceptable and might
work.
(Dr Butler) It is an interesting incentive to increase
the register. When there was the redistribution, which was to
be based on the electoral registers of 1991, I believe in Birmingham
there were one or two MPs who thought that Birmingham was just
trembling between ten and 11 Members and there was a great drive
to get the local council to put extra resources into electoral
registration for that year to tip them up so there would be one
more Member.
Chairman
48. That happened in a lot of places.
(Professor Blackburn) Chairman, will your inquiry
be looking at the principles upon which registration should be
conducted, in other words the issue of double or multiple registration,
the issue of whether ex-patriates should be on voter registration?
Chairman: Yes, we are open to suggestions on
all of those points. Would you like to address them now? The Clerk
reminds me that they do come up later.
Mr Singh
49. This may not be a question for you but do
you think registration officers carry forward names far too readily
and is there a problem with that?
(Dr Butler) There are great variations in practice
on this. Obviously it is a nuisance if you take somebody off the
register when they should be on. Some officials are willing to
leave them on and, even they have not contacted them for three
years, they still leave them on. It does vary greatly. There has
been the argument advanced to local authorities that there is
an incentive to local councils to have a larger registration.
Certainly I remember being told 20 years ago how much there was
pressure in some places to keep the register large, not to eliminate
names, not for the sake of the poor people left on the register
who might be cut off but more because it actually affected the
grants to local authorities that have been on the basis of mid-year
estimates of population which are put out by the census year by
year between censuses. The electoral register was a component
in these mid-year estimates and, therefore, local councils actually
got money for having more people on the register. I do not know
how far that is still true.
50. So there was an incentive for inaccurate
registers?
(Dr Butler) That is correct, yes.
51. I hope that is not happening now. Maybe
we can increase registration if you pointed out to people that
their availability of credit might be affected if they are not
on the register. I believe that credit agencies use electoral
registers to see whether people are living at that address or
not. Is that something you have thought of?
(Professor Blackburn) I think that is an interesting
idea too. The bigger issue, of course, is whether or not there
should be a rolling electoral register. I think if there was a
rolling electoral register all the existing administrative procedures
would come up for scrutiny. I think there are other mechanisms
that one can think of that could be more effective in the tying
up of people's residence with registration, the most obvious one
being linked with council tax returns.
52. Turning to people who might not register
because they feel themselves vulnerable for whatever reason, should
they be allowed to register anonymously? Do any of the countries
have that kind of system?
(Dr Butler) I believe in Australia there are arrangements
for people who are battered wives and the like to have secret
names. There is a strong argument about this both ways. I am not
privy to it. It is one that certainly gets into the journal of
the Association of Electoral Administrators. These are the technical
matters that you know about, like homeless persons and people
who do not want their names on the register, the anxiety about
the abuse of the register by companies, mail order companies and
the like, selling registers. Now you can get them on the Internet
from the States. There are complicated things coming along. The
Electoral Commission would be needed to monitor new technology
coming in.
53. Is there evidence to show that people do
not register because they do not want their name to be used by
commercial organisations?
(Dr Butler) I am afraid I must say "ask the professionals".
54. In terms of the poll tax, I think you mentioned
three per cent of people were not registered because of that.
Is that based on research?
(Dr Butler) I am sorry?
55. In terms of when the poll tax was introduced—
(Dr Butler) Yes, there is research on that. Iain McLean
wrote an article about the poll tax. There was a book that he
and I wrote called Fixing the Boundaries which was about
the redistribution of seats and the redrawing of boundaries. I
do not know if that is within your ambit. He did a study on the
efficiency of the register and the impact of the poll tax on the
register. I wrote a book on the poll tax too. I stole his figures
and put them in loosely but I do not carry them in my head.
56. I think you said three per cent?
(Dr Butler) It was two or three per cent, in that
order, not above that.
57. In fact, the impact was very little compared
to the inaccuracies that existed?
(Dr Butler) It was a small additional complication
which may have added a third or something to the error rate at
that particular moment.
58. What suggestions would you have for registering
homeless people?
(Dr Butler) I do not think I have anything useful
to say on that.
(Professor Blackburn) No, I have not conducted research
on that.
59. Double registration: do we know how many
people have legitimate double registration? Have any injustices
occurred because of double registration in terms of voting patterns
or impacts?
(Dr Butler) I think there is some evidence on that.
I think both the Electoral Survey and Tony Heath have got material
on this. I think you will also find there is some polling evidence
and if you talk to Bob Worcester at Mori he will give you some
evidence because pollsters use the electoral register as a sampling
frame and have a great interest in the accuracy of the register.
On the error, the poll tax error, I was Chairman of a Commission
put up by the Market Research Association to look into the failure
of the polls in 1992 and we did assemble in this report which
came out in 1994 evidence about the efficiency of the register
as a source of error in the polls.
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