Memorandum by Kirklees Metropolitan Council
(PVF 23)
I'm sorry that this response is a little late
but it's been a very busy time of the year as we've worked towards
the establishment of a new council administration for 2004-05.
I enclose a response to your questionnaire on follow-up to the
postal voting exercise. This has been completed largely by our
Electoral Services Officers, but I would endorse all the comments
that she makes.
Can I add a couple more general points.
Firstly, something which may not be reported
widely, but a very distinct impression shared by all political
parties in Kirklees was the impact that alphabetical order has
on the results of elections in a multi-candidate ballot. It's
hard to prove it in a scientific way, but it's firmly believed
that if the candidate's name began with a letter that falls later
in the alphabet, then their chances of success were diminished.
Quite simply, people seemed to go down the list and apportion
their three votes before they got to the bottom of the list! It
may be interesting to do some controlled studies at some stage
to test this and see whether there are ways of countering the
effect.
Secondly, I want to emphasise what I think is
the biggest threat to the integrity of postal voting. It's something
that I became very conscious of as the campaign proceeded.
There was a real sense amongst people that they
are not able to cast their vote in privacy. I had a number of
complaints, which I suspect was just the tip of the iceberg, from
people who couldn't really lodge a formal complaint because they
had completed the ballot paper themselves, and arguably of their
own free choice. Their version of events however was that they
had been approached by supporters of particular candidates who
they knew, and who had been urging them to complete the ballot
papers while they were visiting. The sense of moral pressure lead
people to give way to this request against their better judgement
at times.
For example, I had one email from someone, who
was not ultimately prepared to pursue the matter, to say that
he was not wishing to vote for a particular party because of the
stance they have taken on Iraq, but when visited by the local
councillor, who had helped him a lot in the past, he'd felt obliged
to complete the papers there and then, and demonstrate the fact
that he was being supportive of his councillor. Afterwards he
regretted having done so and felt that he and his family members
had been pressured into making a decision.
I do think that this is a fundamental issue
which needs to be thought through very carefully. It's easy to
dismiss the value of secrecy of the ballot box in favour of higher
turnout, but there is a significant policy issue which should
be considered before we get to a situation where success goes
to those parties that are best at pressurising people into supporting
them by intensive campaigning around the time that votes are distributed.
Tony Elson
Chief Executive
Please see below the response on behalf of the
Returning Officer to your letter of the 14 June 2004.
GENERAL
1. The problems caused by the lateness of
the legislation were numerous. Most particularly it was virtually
impossible to plan effectively for a major change to the election
process, involving 285,000 electors, in around six weeks (time
available before packs were printed after final Government decision).
Much of the initial planning had to be done before the Pilot Order
was made available on the 27 April, with little firm idea as to
the final contents of that Order.
There was no time available to refresh the register
of electors and this meant that many packs were sent to people's
previous addresses. Although the onus is on the elector to re-register
when they move house, they expect the Council to know, resulting
in many complaints.
There was no time to train staff. The software
company had to write programs for "polling progress information"
in a matter of weeks and so it was untested. It was only by good
luck rather than good management that this worked effectively
and senior members of staff had to train others without having
been trained themselves.
There was a big impact on the Council's IT department
who had to work to an almost impossible timetable to source new
hardware and install it for the scanning process.
The lateness of the legislation meant that preparations
had to be made for two types of election and polling stations
were booked and then cancelled, causing disruption to school timetables
particularly. We did not know until the 1 April what staff we
might require and when, and so recruitment was more difficult
than usual.
There was insufficient time for electors to
inform us of re-direction details between the preelection mailing
being sent out and the closing date of the 17 May. The fact that
changes could be made for six days after the close of nominations
meant that the printers could not get on with the printing process.
2. The timescale between close of nominations
and delivery of ballot packs was the main reason why many authorities
had printing problems. The checking of ballot paper proofs is
one of the most important aspects of the process—to get
that wrong is to fail. Yet senior members of the electoral team
had to do this well into the evening after working long hours
in an effort to ensure the printers received the data on time.
In Kirklees 280 nominations were received for the local government
elections.
3. The all-postal ballot would not, in normal
circumstances, have been a problem with regard to skills and resources
in an authority the size of Kirklees with an elections team of
seven fte employees. However, without the dedication and professionalism
of these staff, working to an almost impossible timetable, the
election would have failed.
All members of staff have suffered constant
abuse over the telephone from members of the public who felt that
a flawed system was being imposed on them. The non-stop adverse
publicity in the press only added to the problems.
If the Government and the Electoral Commission
want to maintain the integrity of the British election system
and retain experienced and committed electoral services staff
they cannot continue to allow major changes to electoral legislation
in impossible timescales.
4. There have been various rumours and a
couple of specific allegations of electoral fraud. The most serious
was the suggestion that supporters of a particular candidate were
representing themselves as supporters of one of his opponents
and going door-to-door collecting blank ballot papers to complete.
This was in a south-east Asian community and was followed up by
the police, although with indeterminant results at this point
in time. The issue seems to be whether this was a very deliberate
attempt at fraud, or whether people were genuinely seeking help
with the completion of forms that they couldn't read, and that
this went beyond the bounds of reasonable practice.
The complexity of the forms, and the fact that
we have significant parts of our community who are not literate
in english, meant that many people would have requested very direct
assistance with the completion of the papers from friends and
neighbours.
PRINTING AND
DISSEMINATION
5. There may have been sufficient printing
capacity for the four pilot regions had the printers been allowed
several more months to prepare and plan. They should have been
able to test their systems on a more straightforward election
eg at the Regional Referendums in the Autumn. As previously mentioned,
the election timetable needs a complete rethink to give more time
between close of nominations and production of ballot packs.
6. No ballot papers required re-printing.
However, our file of redirections was never processed by the printer
and this resulted in the electoral staff manually preparing 300
ballot packs. This took four staff a full day, time which we did
not have to spare. It also meant that 300 people received two
ballot papers as one had already gone to their registered address.
7. The Royal Mail Managers assigned to Kirklees
tried hard to make it work, particularly our own Customer Operations
Manager who worked, as all stakeholders in this, under tremendous
pressure, which was evident in our meetings with him.
We had few problems with delivery of the packs.
A number of people reported non-delivery but the majority of these
were near to election day itself when they came under pressure
from candidates to return their postal votes and rang claiming
non-receipt. Staff suspected they may have thrown them away upon
receiving them.
However, the main problems in Kirklees came
in the last week before polling day when we received around half
of our total return in the last four days. 20,000 were received
specifically from Wards in the north part of Kirklees on Tuesday
8 June, many of which we know were posted before the Bank Holiday.
The previous afternoon we had been told that there were no Kirklees
envelopes in the Royal Mail sorting offices and yet 14 hours later
20,000 arrived.
The returns we received in the last week went
against all Royal Mail predictions and, whilst it is appreciated
other factors may have been involved, eg the Bank Holiday, press
publicity and the candidate/agent activity in the area, there
are questions which need asking about Royal Mail's capacity to
deal with this on this scale.
One point to note is that we were told that
Bradford Mail Centre staff were not asked to work additional hours
at weekends during this process.
8. (a) no ballot papers were delivered
by hand.
(b) no ballot papers were collected by hand
except for the small number where electors requested assistance
in their own homes.
9. (a), (b), (c) we issued 98 replacements
for lost or undelivered ballot papers by polling day.
VOTING PRACTICALITIES
AND RETURNS
10. (a) The need for a signed, witnessed
declaration was the biggest problem for the electorate and the
staff within the elections office and it was hard to see what
it did to minimise fraud. This was evidenced by the number of
calls to the helpline on this subject. The majority of complainants
felt that asking a witness to sign compromised the secrecy of
the ballot. Lack of understanding meant that they felt their actual
vote was being witnessed, rather than their signature.
The need to return incorrectly completed declarations
of identities created an enormous workload for which it was difficult
to prepare. The subsequent return of these by electors and the
matching processes involved in tying up these and those ballot
papers returned separately to the declaration was immense.
Many declarations were sent back separately
to the ballot paper and at all the opening sessions two people
were employed solely to enter these numbers into spreadsheets.
The matching process in the last few days was horrendous, but
there was a commitment from all staff involved in this to ensure
that people who didn't understand the ballot pack should not lose
their vote.
(b)
It was not the dimensions of the envelopes
that caused a problem, rather the dimensions of the ballot papers
which at an election for the whole Council meant that the length
had to accommodate sixteen candidates in one Ward. We received
many comments that when the pack was opened it was felt to be
just too complicated.
(c)
The sheer complexity of the combined election
ballot papers and the witnessed declaration meant that the instructions
were going to be difficult for many electors, particularly those
where English is not their first language, and the elderly. In
Kirklees we added an additional A4 pictogram to the leaflet, though
we have no real evidence this helped greatly. Helpline staff could,
however, refer electors to this when they requested assistance
over the phone.
11. (a) 261 ballot papers, 0.18%, arrived
too late to be counted.
(b)
2,708 were not counted because of errors in
completion of the pack. This was 1.88% of the total ballot packs
initially returned.
12. Turnout was 50%, an increase of 15%
on the last local government election and an increase of 27% on
the last European election.
13. Not applicable.
14. (a) A large number of temporary staff
were employed within the elections office from the beginning of
May when the pre-election letter was despatched. We continue to
employ a couple of temporary staff to deal with the Electoral
Commission evaluation, whilst permanent staff begin to take well-earned
holidays. These additional staff equate to 1,162 hours at a cost
of approximately £5,500.00. These are only provisional figures
to hand at the moment.
(b)
All permanent staff worked many hours overtime
and gave up much of their bank holiday entitlement. The number
of hours worked over and above normal hours was 761. The cost
of this is not available at the moment.
15. The overall cost of the election is
not known yet as invoices for goods and services have not yet
been received.
OTHER ISSUES
The Barcode
This was a major cause of concern to the electorate,
not least because of adverse press publicity, and explanations
as to the reasons behind this took up many hours of staff time
on the helpline. Many people are convinced that all sorts of information
is stored within this and feel it serves to allow the way they
have voted to be stored against their name in a computer system.
Voter education on this subject should be a priority, given the
public conceptions regarding secrecy and fraud.
Polling Progress Information (PPI)
Apart from the infrastructure and additional
staffing required, this caused enormous problems. The frequency
of release of this information was agreed regionally but Kirklees
had a local agreement with the political parties who fielded a
large number of candidates to release it to one person who would
undertake to cascade it to candidates. If, as colleagues in adjacent
authorities did, we had prepared this for all 280 candidates we
would have had even more problems.
Delays in receipt of returns by Royal Mail meant
that candidates and agents inspecting the PPI expected many more
envelopes to have been scanned than showed in the reports. This
resulted in many calls to the office which took up valuable time.
Conflicting information from the Government
and Electoral Commission regarding making this information available
to electors added to the difficulties.
We also received many complaints from electors
when they became aware that political parties knew whether they
had returned their postal vote. This resulted in more concerns
about the secrecy and security of the ballot.
The sheer numbers (over 140,000) being scanned
into the software inevitably meant that some were missed, giving
the possible false impression that envelopes had been lost in
the post.
Opening of ADPs and traditional "Polling
Day"
We had concerns about opening ADPs on Tuesday
1 June and Saturday 5 June, particularly as the 1 June was a holiday
in Kirklees. These turned out to be justified as very few people
used them on these dates. The opening hours and days should not
be so prescribed, as different conditions prevail in different
areas.
We chose to open the maximum number allowed
for the size of our electorate (four) and this turned out to be
a good decision as they were all well used in the week before
polling day.
If we are to move to all-postal voting the public
perception of "election day" needs to change. It is
especially not necessary to open from 0700 hours until 2200 hours
on the final day when people have had every opportunity to cast
their vote by post or otherwise before this time.
The last minute returns on polling day, both
to the Assistance and Delivery Points and through the Royal Mail
sweep, created untold pressures after the close of Poll, when
17 staff worked until 2.00 am the following morning. Several hundred
ballot envelopes still had to be opened the morning after at the
counting of the votes. Any part packs could not then be "matched"
with any previously returned declarations or ballot papers.
Electoral Commission Training Materials
This was made available far too late into the
timetable and much of it, though well produced from the printing
point of view, gave no new information. We are all experienced
in running polling stations and so did not need a great amount
on the running of an Assistance and Delivery Point. We would,
however, have welcomed more information early on about the evaluation
process so that we could plan to respond to the questions we are
going to be asked. Information about how to tackle the postal
vote opening process, matching processes etc. would have been
welcomed but we received nothing.
SUMMARY
We are concerned that the Electoral Commission
has until September to report to Government on the evaluation
of these pilots. This means that once again the opinions of electoral
administrators will not be acted upon in time for the Regional
Referendums in Autumn. It is vital that our concerns are taken
on board immediately to ensure that when we are asked to deliver
this again it is with the most suitable preparation.
The Electoral Services team in Kirklees would
like it to be known, that though these elections were delivered
successfully, it was due entirely to their dedication and commitment
against all the odds. Little meaningful guidance was received
from Government or the Electoral Commission and what was received
was at times conflicting or came far too late.
In the last few years electoral legislation
has changed beyond all recognition but has continually been released
at the last minute with little or no preparation time to make
sure it can be successfully delivered. Electoral Services staff
are paying the price for voter apathy and if this is allowed to
continue the electoral processes in this country which have previously
been admired throughout the world will lose their credibility.
Tony Elson
Chief Executive
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