Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60
- 79)
TUESDAY 2 JUNE 1998
PROFESSOR ROBERT
BLACKBURN AND
DR DAVID
BUTLER
60. Finally, would you recommend that Registration
Officers pursue people who do not register much more effectively
than they do at the moment?
(Dr Butler) Yes. It is a question of the costs. Again,
in the electoral administrators' literature you will see the costs
of canvassing, whether you do a second mailing, a third mailing,
whether you canvass and you canvass in particular hard areas.
61. I mean more particularly the area of sanctions.
(Dr Butler) I do not think I know enough about the
sanctions to say anything useful. I am quite clear that you will
find that a lot of people have given an awful lot of time to thinking
about that and will give you nice compact solid evidence.
(Professor Blackburn) There is always room for improvement.
The returning officers at local authorities have made big efforts
to improve and I think improvements have been made over the last
ten or 15 years. I think on the earlier question, you asked about
double or multiple registration. So far as I am aware no detailed
statistical survey has been done on this at all. It is something
that I think would be a useful function for someone to carry out.
An Electoral Commission as part of its role would be clearing
accounts for electoral statistics. If they were asked to do research
into this by, say, a parliamentary Committee it is the type of
thing that it could do. It could obviously be quite a time consuming
and laborious exercise. I think my concern about that is the underlying
principle. Again, do we think it is a good idea that people can
register in more than one constituency or not? I am a bit concerned
that we are attaching too much significance to administrative
criteria because I think that the underlying principles of electoral
law are very important as well. It is the principle itself that
we should be applying here and perhaps the overriding consideration
should be whether it is important it should be retained or whether
it should be done away with.
62. The principle surely is to maximise the
opportunities for our citizens to vote and we do not wish to deny
those away from home, students for example or even second homeowners,
on the day of the General Election the right to vote. So we must
be in favour in general terms.
(Professor Blackburn) Is it right that some voters
have got a choice as to where they cast their vote? They may care
to cast their vote in a marginal constituency as opposed to a
safe seat whereas others cannot. And those people are likely to
be the better off if they have got more than one place of residence
than other people. My view is that one should be registered to
vote in one constituency only and that should be your main residence.
I realise of course there is a slight problem in this in that
it is not something that appeals to MPs—I am certainly not
impugning MPs' motives—but of course it is politically convenient
or advantageous for MPs to vote in the constituency they represent
as opposed to where they live at home but I hope that would not
be a reason for obstructing what seems to me to be otherwise a
good principle of election law.
(Dr Butler) Could I suggest there is an answer here?
If you say you do not want double registration you could do what
they do in Australia where there is a central place in every constituency
where you can vote in any other constituency. The essence of the
Australian situation however is that because they have compulsory
voting and because of preferential voting they do not finalise
election results for about five or six days after the election.
In fact in all but half a dozen constituencies it is quite plain
on the night and it does not actually hang up the formation of
government. In Britain we have this impulse to get everything
fixed the moment we have voted. The new PM lands in Downing Street
the next day. We work terribly fast. If we could tolerate either
advance voting where people could vote up to three or four days
before polling day and then have their votes included or to adjust
the final total votes (which would affect half a dozen seats where
the majority was under 200 but otherwise would not affect the
outcome) you could have an arrangement for postal votes to be
included in the final totals which would enable you to increase
your turnout and have single registration. This kind of thing
which needs to be looked into in administrative detail. The Australians
do it quite successfully. They offer an analogy that is worth
looking into.
63. If you have a rolling register of course
you could register a few days in advance in the constituency of
your choice, could you not?
(Dr Butler) Yes, it removes a great deal of the need
to remove the ambiguity. In fact in Australia elections take 35
days so one has got two weeks' notice, as it were, while they
are sorting out closing the rolls. They close them about 20 days
before the vote; they do try and update them and they have to
because they are going to punish people for non-voting so they
have to make the registers as good as possible. In Canada also
they compile a register at the time of the election. Again they
have 30 to 40 days from the announcement of the election to the
vote and they do spend 20 days or something like that tidying
up the register.
Ms Hughes
64. Could I just pursue the rolling register
because I know this is something that Professor Blackburn has
mentioned and indeed we have had evidence of support for that
from other quarters and also evidence from local authorities and
others in particular about some of the administrative difficulties
and some of the principles that they are concerned about in relation
to the establishment of a rolling register. Can you tell us what
you think the main difficulties are that would need to be overcome
if we were to move to the establishment of a rolling register?
(Professor Blackburn) I am not sure I feel qualified
to speak on the administrative repercussions of doing it but clearly
there would be major administrative changes that would have to
be made and it would have resource implications particularly in
the short term during the changeover to the new system with possibly
new types of computers and computerised packages involved.
65. You see the main difficulties as administrative?
(Professor Blackburn) Yes, bureaucratic. I would not
think the longer term cost would be significantly higher, though
others are better qualified than I to comment on that. But if
I can make a comment on the principle itself. I think there are
clear advantages in having a rolling electoral register. Just
one of them would be that those people who when it comes to election
time notice that for some reason they have been left off the register,
can quickly file their registration and be able to exercise their
ballot on the day.
66. How would that work best in practice do
you think? Would it be literally a register that was continuously
open until the cutoff date or would it be fixed points monthly
through the year? Would we still need an annual thrust if you
like?
(Professor Blackburn) You could have an annual check.
As I say, I would relate it to council tax returns because that
is the most simple way of doing it. I think the registration officer
should be under a duty to keep the electoral register accurate
at all times. There would be certain points each year when it
would be specifically checked as such and otherwise people moving
into the new constituency would be under an obligation to register
and complete a form. It could be done routinely by a solicitor
handling the conveyance in the same way as you register yourself
for other purposes including council tax or water services.
(Dr Butler) You ought to take off the dead. One of
the things about turnout is that 1.5 per cent of us die each year
and therefore, if an election takes place in October on a register
12 months old, 1.5 per cent of the people cannot vote, legally
anyway, because they are not there.
Chairman: When I fought North Devon in 1970
a number of dead people did struggle to the polls. They mainly
voted Conservative I have to say.
Ms Hughes
67. Do you think without a system of compulsory
voting (as we have got now) it is an integral part of the rolling
register system that you have still got to allow a period after
the calling of the election for people to go on with a cutoff
date presumably some time between the calling and the election
date itself?
(Professor Blackburn) Yes as soon as the Election
is announced the registration officer would be under an obligation
to publish the current state of the electoral register. Those
people who were not on the register for any particular reason
would be able to file a claim asking to have their name entered
immediately and thus be able to vote. There would be a specified
timeframe within which non-registered voters must act.
68. Do you think that could be open to abuse,
the fact that there is no particular period?
(Dr Butler) I think it could be open to abuse. This
is one of the problems of rolling registers. We might go back
to the days of claims and objections. If you look at what happened
before the First World War when the register was much more a political
activity—Sir Robert Peel, "Register, register, register"—that
was what electoral organisations were doing going back to the
1830s to that sort of model. You had an incredibly large number
of claims and objections, thousands, many more than happen now.
Now it is accepted as a routine process. If you were constantly
adjusting it, it would be an incentive (if you had enough money)
to have in the party a permanent registration officer niggling
and watching day by day the additions and the excisions from a
rolling register. I think that it would not be just a matter of
the problems of bureaucracy of the local authority, but I think
political parties would start screaming. There is a considerable
economy for them in having a register in one brief moment in the
year when they look at the registers and can make claims. In many
cases they do not make any at all. In a reasonably marginal seat
I think you have got to say you would have to have a permanent
Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat election register-watcher
who was just keeping a sharp eye on what his rivals were doing.
69. How do you think you might avoid the potential
in that system for people not to bother to register and then calling
the election is what motivates people so that there was this huge
demand to register in the 20 days?
(Professor Blackburn) As I say, I think there should
be a legal requirement to register within three weeks of moving
into the constituency.
70. Apart from Australia, which I think has
been mentioned, are there any other examples of countries that
successfully use, in your own view, the rolling register system?
(Dr Butler) I have a suspicion they have it in New
Zealand. I would like to mention one thing in this context. The
Cranley Onslow Bill was a Private Members' Bill about ten years
ago which enabled the local authorities to change the register
when there was a mistake. There were horrible cases of complete
streets getting left off the register and nobody noticing and
it was actually illegal to remedy it. Here was a totally beneficial
and very sensible use of a Private Members' Bill in the early
1980s which enabled—it only represented half a per cent
of the total thing—straight errors to be put right now within
the year. In that very small way we have a rolling register which
is just a remedy of past mistakes. Nobody had done anything about
it including the Home Office and we had this problem at every
election. I heard scandals, stories of whole streets left off
in particular constituencies and nothing could be done about it.
One reasonably simple remedy brought that to a conclusion.
71. Just finally, it has been suggested to us
that a rolling register would require a lot more co-operation
between local authorities and greater standardisation of practices
than currently exists. That has been put forward as an argument
in favour. Do you think there is any force in that argument?
(Professor Blackburn) Yes I do and I do not think
we should be too frightened of moving towards more centralised
guidelines whilst respecting regional and local special factors.
Again I would link this up with the work of an Electoral Commission
which I think should have overall supervision of good practice
in the registration of voters.
(Dr Butler) I am sure if you talk to registration
officers you will get them stressing the particularity of their
constituencies. The registration officer's whole task is extraordinarily
different in an inner city from the task of the registration officer
in a nice genteel country suburb.
Mr Linton
72. Questions 6 and 7 are a lot of minor questions.
I thought it might be useful to give you a run through of what
the subjects are so you can decide how to field the questions
and say whether you think you have anything to contribute or whether
we should be asking other witnesses. I am going to come back to
the questions but just to give you advance warning. Question 6
is on the length of campaigns, on existing rules for postal and
proxy voting, on weekend voting and on hours of polling. Question
7 covers different forms of absent voting, voting on demand, choice
of polling station, supermarkets, mobile polling stations, all
those kind of things. On the length of campaigns you mentioned
that Australia and Canada have longer ones. Do you think it would
be beneficial from the point of view of absent voting if we had
longer campaigns than 23 days?
(Professor Blackburn) I think the bigger issue is
General Election timing generally. My own firm view is that there
should be fixed intervals between General Elections. Our present
system of General Election timing is an anachronism and it would
be in everybody's interests that there were fixed intervals between
elections as has just been established for the Scottish Parliament.
This allows all the parties and candidates to pace their campaigning
efforts and also permits ample opportunity for absent and postal
voting arrangements for polling day.
Mr Linton: As long as we still have unfixed
elections, do you think there should be longer notice?
Chairman: You mean unfixed terms.
Mr Linton
73. Yes unfixed terms. Do you think they should
give longer notice from the point of view of postal voters?
(Professor Blackburn) Longer notice between the Prime
Minister's press release and the dissolution of Parliament?
74. Between the announcement of the election
and the actual election. Do you think that would make it easier?
(Professor Blackburn) I think there is a great deal
to be said for extending the period of time between the Prime
Minister's announcement of the election date and the dissolution
of Parliament so that fuller preparations can be made. But I myself
would not favour extending the period of the election campaign
proper. I think the electorate feels that four weeks is more than
enough to be bombarded with electioneering propaganda.
Chairman
75. So do the politicians.
(Dr Butler) With the exception of February 1974 when
we had an election of 20 days. Then of course the Bobby Sands
amendment came which added three days so it moved from a minimum
of 20 to a minimum of 23 days from the actual issue of the writ
of dissolution to polling day but de facto we have always
had at least a week more. Last time we had a six-week election
because Mr Major hoped that the Labour Party would put its foot
in its mouth and it had six weeks to make a fool of itself. Unfortunately
for them it went the other way in the early days for other reasons.
Many people complained that the six-week election was too long.
People got bored with it. Our three-week election is pretty fast.
I believe in Malaysia and Japan they have it down to two weeks.
In other countries, India and Australia and Canada, it takes longer.
Obviously the real campaign is much longer in the United States,
leaving out the actual legal technicality of nominations. The
virtue of a longer campaign is that you can have more time to
apply for postal votes. In one election, I think it was 1983,
there were only four days from the announcement to get the advertisements
out into the papers. A large number of postal votes do come in
from people filling in forms which are just taken from newspaper
advertisements; the Home Office has a budget for that kind of
advertising. In one election they did not get their advertisements
planted into the papers at all. They have got to process applications
of postal votes and the length of time that we currently have
is a bit short, so I, on the whole, think that a norm of 30-days
(leaving out the legal side of the thing) from announcement to
voting is probably quite desirable but because of the limits on
election expenses and other aspects of campaigning 20 days tends
to be what the actual campaign takes. In fact, the constraint
on elections now is less what is done in the constituencies than
the BBC and ITV trying to get in all the party's fair share of
election coverage on television.
(Professor Blackburn) I re-stress though the importance
of the distinction between the length of the election campaign
proper, which I think is probably about right at the moment, and
the notice that is given to everybody prior to dissolution which
I think is unsatisfactory. It is worthwhile reminding ourselves
of the change that took place in 1974 when Edward Heath abruptly
called a General Election and gave one day's notice of dissolution.
Prior to 1974 it was always customary for up to 20 days' notice
to be given to everyone before Parliament was dissolved and this
was a very valuable preparatory time allowing Opposition parties
and everybody to prepare. Since 1974, as so often happens, this
political precedent has been seized upon and Prime Ministers now
call a dissolution of Parliament very quickly after the public
announcement. Of course there was the curious situation in 1997
when Parliament was prorogued for an extended period prior to
dissolution which was a rather peculiar way of doing things. Restoring
the earlier practice (and this Committee could endorse it) of
the Prime Minister making his announcement and then allowing a
period of at least 20 days before dissolution of Parliament would
be some improvement.
76. Weekend voting, Saturday/Sunday voting as
the Plant Committee have suggested. Do you think that would be
an improvement?
(Professor Blackburn) Yes it would in my view. I think
having it on a normal weekday is a bit off putting for some voters
and no doubt goes some way to explaining why the turnout is lower
than it might be otherwise. Also if you were going to have a system
of compulsory voting I think you would have to move to a date
declared to be a public holiday or a weekend. The difficulty then
is deciding whether you want to go for a weekend date or a date
declared to be a public holiday. My own preference would be for
a weekend date but this of course touches on religious sensibilities
so I think if a preference was stated for a Saturday or Sunday,
one would want to consult with leaders of the religious faiths
involved to see whether it was acceptable to them. There have
been objections in other countries to voting on Saturdays and
Sundays and those religious objections might apply here. If it
was acceptable to churches in this country then I would have thought
Sunday would be a good idea.
Mr Winnick
77. On that particular point even in this day
and age would there not be quite a lot of religious objection?
On Saturday orthodox Jews under no circumstances would consider
voting and although Sunday church-going is quite low nevertheless
the Home Office tells us there has been a number of communications
received objecting that what is considered by Christians to be
a holy day should be a voting day.
(Professor Blackburn) I think the Chief Rabbi in France
announced an objection and encouraged people not to vote during
the second ballot of the last Presidential campaign. That is some
indication that such religious objections do exist and are still
in circulation.
(Dr Butler) That election was on a Sunday. As good
Europeans you might feel we ought to try and conform. Only Denmark,
Holland and Ireland do not vote on a Sunday. All the other members
of the European Community do have Sunday voting. This will produce
a certain problem next June yet again with the European elections.
There is the question as to why we vote on Thursdays. There is
no firm answer. In 1931 we voted on a Tuesday, in 1924 we voted
on a Wednesday and in 1918 we voted on a Saturday—so the
first ever one-day General Election was held on a Saturday.
78. In 1918?
(Dr Butler) Yes, I think therefore, as to religious
sensibilities, if you are talking about other kinds of flexibility
(advance voting, postal voting) you cope with this by giving dispensation
to people who want to record their vote but would not do it for
good reason were it on a Saturday or Sunday. I am sure that could
be coped with administratively. There have been one or two experiments.
There was a Saturday by-election in the early 1960s.
79. It was Wednesday for the Hamilton by-election
because there was a world football match being played the following
day.
(Dr Butler) The reason for Thursday I believe is that
in some kind of traditional constituencies they had one Town Hall
and there were three big parties and they each wanted to have
a go at the Town Hall so on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday they
could draw lots as to who had the Town Hall and you could cope
with three parties and still have an election in the week and
not spoil the weekend with local authority people having to count
on Saturdays or Sundays. We have moved into a different world.
I see no objection whatever to moving to Saturdays or Sundays
provided you do make special provision for the limited number
of people who would have their sensibilities offended by that.
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