Memorandum by Barnsley Metropolitan Borough
Council (PVF 24)
Thank you for your letter of 14 June asking
for my comments on the recent pilot all postal election. The following
brief points may be of assistance.
I would like to begin by emphasising just how
successful the all-postal pilot actually was. Far more people
voted in 2004 than in the previous year, and there can be little
doubt that this was a direct result of the all postal ballot.
In my own Borough the turnout increased from about 40,000 votes
in 2003 (when we had a conventional election) to about 65,000
in 2004—a rise of over 60%. Quite simply, this was a step
change in terms of democratic engagement.
Perhaps the most important lesson, which we
learned from the pilot, is that there needs to be a strong commitment
to partnership working. In particular, there must be high level
co-operation and trust between the Local Authority, its ballot
pack suppliers and the Royal Mail. We were able to achieve this
constructive relationship. As a consequence, we could sort out
any difficulties before they became serious problems.
I strongly believe that without this relationship
there is enormous scope for the organisational failures, which
occurred in some areas, to become widespread.
There is a steep learning curve that local authorities
must address. The skills required for a conventional election
are not the skills needed for an all-postal ballot. It is less
about "mounting" elections in the traditional sense
and more about putting in place effective project management arrangements.
All postal voting requires councils to marry up a range of internal
and external resources and, even more important, to secure the
active co-operation and commitment of the different players who
control these resources. We achieved this, but it required a higher
level of senior management involvement in the electoral process
than in the past. Under all postal voting relatively junior staff
can no longer be left to shoulder the burden of election planning
and implementation.
The all-postal pilot also offered important
lessons to Central Government. In particular, what quickly became
apparent was that greater attention should have been paid to the
practical difficulties involved in undertaking an exercise on
this scale. The delay in securing Parliamentary approval for the
pilot regions was unfortunate. But the delay in producing the
final version of the order, governing the conduct of the election,
was inexplicable.
Finally, I would like to pass on the concerns
expressed to me to by several candidates and agents about the
requirement for electors to complete a witnessed Declaration of
Identity. The anecdotal evidence which they presented suggested
that this provision either confused people, because they did not
know who could witness their Declaration, offended them, because
they felt that it compromised the principal of a secret ballot
or caused them practical problems, in terms of finding someone
who could witness it for them.
Borough Secretary
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