Memorandum by Gateshead Council (PVF 12)
GENERAL
1. The delay in passing the necessary legislation—both
the Act and the regulations—certainly caused problems both
for us and our suppliers. The main difficulty was that we had
no certainty about the details of the pilot until the regulations
were formally confirmed on 27 April, three days before the last
date for publishing the notice of election. This made it very
difficult for us to plan the election and for suppliers to be
clear about exactly what they were supposed to produce. In future
pilots, the legislation should be settled well in advance of the
start of the formal election process.
2. In principle, the short timescale between
close of nominations and the need to deliver postal voting packs
to electors was manageable—in fact we had managed it in
2002 and 2003. In practice the problem this year was that over
120 authorities were all working with a limited number of suppliers
to produce a very complicated, perhaps unnecessarily complicated,
product within a two-week window. This is where the system came
under pressure.
3. From Gateshead's point of view the fact
that all-postal ballots were mandatory did not cause us a problem,
since we already had two years experience of all-postal voting.
4. We have received no allegations of fraud.
PRINTING AND
DISSEMINATION
5. It was our experience that there was
insufficient printing capacity. We re-engaged the supplier who
had produced our ballot packs in the previous two years, but in
the event he proved unable to deliver the required product within
the required timescale. Fortunately we were able to find another
supplier at very short notice.
6. The ballot papers did not require re-printing—it
was a question of the second supplier completing the task that
the first supplier had failed to perform.
7. We were very pleased with the performance
of Royal Mail. They went out of their way to overcome the difficulties
caused by the delay in printing of the ballot papers and they
ensured that all electors received their ballot papers no later
than Wednesday 2 June. This involved staff working on the bank
holiday Monday. There was no evidence of any failure in delivery.
Royal Mail also provided an efficient service in returning ballot
papers to the Returning Officer, including a final "sweep"
of post boxes on 10 June.
8. We did not deliver, or collect, any ballot
papers by hand.
9. As far as we are aware all electors had
received their ballot papers at least five days before election
day (in most cases at least seven days before).
VOTING PRACTICALITIES
AND RETURNS
10. Clearly some voters did find a difficulty
in the need for a signed witness declaration. Evidence for this
statement includes:
— Over 1,000 votes were rejected for
lack of a valid declaration of identity.
— Our Assistance and Delivery point
dealt with around 1,800 requests for assistance, of which a high
proportion related to the declaration of identity.
— The declaration of identity was probably
the most frequently raised issue in calls to the Council's helpline.
In general, the helpline was extremely busy
(unfortunately we do not have an exact figure at this stage for
the number of calls) which tends to suggest that many people did
not fully understand the instructions. There were no particular
problems about the dimensions of the ballot envelopes.
11. (a) 144 ballot packs were received too
late to be included in the count. This equates to 0.2% of the
total number of ballot papers (69,177) included in the count.
(b)
In the local elections 1,823 ballot packs (2.6%)
were rejected before inclusion in the count (through invalid declaration,
no declaration received or no ballot paper received) and 427 (0.6%)
were rejected at the count.
12. See attached table. All-postal voting
clearly has increased turnout when compared with the most recent
year of traditional elections (1999).
13. As the table shows, turnout in the local
elections this year was slightly down on 2002 and 2003 when we
also piloted all-postal voting. One factor may be the increased
complexity of having to use a declaration of identity and double
envelopes which we had not used in the two previous years.
COST AND
RESOURCES
14. We did have to bring in extra staff
and pay them overtime. This was not so much due to all-postal
voting in itself as to the complexities of the system which required:
— ballot packs to be scanned in and
progressive polling information produced;
— declarations of identity to be extracted
from outer envelopes and checked to ensure that their barcode
matched that on the ballot papers before being separated from
the inner envelope;
— inner envelopes to be opened and
ballot papers extracted, separated and counted;
— invalid declarations of identity
to be returned to the elector with a covering letter; and
— a "mix and match" process
to be operated for ballot papers received without declarations,
declarations received without ballot papers, and declarations
and ballot papers where the barcodes did not match.
This proved to require somewhat more resources
than we had originally envisaged. For example, on our busiest
day it took a team of 35 to 40 people from 9.00 am to 8.00 pm
to process around 18,000 returned ballot packs.
15. Unfortunately we do not have a cost
figure at the stage as we are still awaiting receipt of a number
of invoices, including those from the printer and Royal Mail.
16. See answer to question 15.
APPENDIX
TURNOUT AT LOCAL AND EUROPEAN ELECTIONS
| 1999
(Traditional)
| 2002
(All-Postal)
| 2003
(All-Postal)
| 2004
(All-Postal)
|
| Local | 26.4% | 57.4%
| 54.7% | 47.7% |
| European | 18.5% | -
| - | 47.3% |
| | |
| |
| 
