WRITTEN ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
Commons Hansard, Monday 8th September
2003 [Continued from column 38W]
ARMED FORCES
(REGISTER OF
ELECTORS)
25. Mr. Brady: To ask the Secretary of State
for Defence what steps his Department has taken to ensure that
service men and women are aware of the requirement to renew their
entry on the armed forces register of electors on an annual basis.
[128442]
Mr. Caplin: The Ministry of Defence issues an
annual Defence Council Instruction explaining voting arrangements
in detail to all members of the armed forces. The last was issued
on 31 January 2003.
ARMED FORCES
(ELECTORAL REGISTRATION)
Mr. Brady: To ask the Secretary of State for
Defence what steps he has taken to ensure that members of Her
Majesty's armed forces are aware of the new requirement to register
to vote on an annual basis. [127748]
Mr. Caplin: It is the individual responsibility
of each member of the armed forces to register to vote annually.
The Ministry of Defence issues an annual Defence Council Instruction
explaining this requirement in detail. The last was issued on
31 January 2003.
Mr. Brady: To ask the Secretary of State for
Defence what procedures have been put in place to facilitate annual
entry on the Service register of electors for Servicemen and women
who are overseas or on active Service. [127749]
Mr. Caplin: It is the individual responsibility
of each member of the armed forces to register to vote annually.
Service personnel overseas can choose to register as Service voters
by means of a Service declaration, but they can then only vote
by proxy. Those who choose to register on their local electoral
register will be able to vote either by post or proxy if they
are overseas or away from home during any election. Every effort
is made by ships, units, and stations to give reasonable assistance
to personnel overseas to register or vote in line with their individual
electoral registration choice.
Mr. Brady: To ask the Secretary of State for
Defence how many members of HM armed forces were registered to
vote on the Service register of electors in each of the last three
years. [127754]
Mr. Caplin: Information on the number of registered
Service voters is no longer held centrally. With the introduction
of the new voting arrangements from 16 February 2001, those armed
forces personnel that now choose to be Service registered voters
register annually with the individual electoral registration officers
of their choice.
Letter from Councillor Alan Thompson,
Leader, Wansbeck Liberal Democrat Group, to the Electoral Commission
regarding the Wansbeck Postal Ballot, 1 May 2003 (POS B/P 01)
Thank you for your letter of 6 October enclosing
the Wansbeck report and the executive summary.
Before the elections the Liberal Democrats in
Wansbeck supported the postal ballot experiment after the officers
had explained the proposals to the Council.
With hindsight we are now opposed to the postal
ballot system.
Low turnouts are a symptom of the views of the
electorate. It is dangerous to treat symptoms by changing the
system so that more ballot papers are returned.
If people abstain that is their right as a citizen.
In areas such as Wansbeck that has been under
one party rule for generations many people believed that the ballot
was not secret. The e-mails, text messages and phone calls from
Council Officers also generated suspicion since the electors expressed
the belief that Officers working for a Labour regime would act
on behalf of that regime. The Labour Party conducted a comprehensive
telephone survey from their call centre in their regional office
which also prompted people who had not voted to ask "how
do they know I have not voted?"
Many of the people that normally vote did not
do so on this occasion because they believed that the system allowed
the establishment to know how they voted.
Many of the people who did vote were elderly
people who do not understand politics, their words, and who would
not normally vote but did so this time because someone called
to see them and posted their ballot paper for them.
What happened to the thousands of ballot papers
that were thrown out with the refuse? Wansbeck has a recycling
system. Could these papers have been used unlawfully by simply
marking the ballot paper, sealing the envelope and posting them
in hundreds if not in thousands?
Malpractice and fraud under this system is almost
impossible to detect because people are reluctant to give evidence
openly whilst continuing to complain in private.
Under the traditional polling station system
fraud is much more difficult even if the political integrity of
the administrators is partial.
The public has the right to abstain and it does
not bring any comfort to the electors to know that the establishment
is changing the system to artificially increase the turnout at
the expense of security and anonymity.
With any other than the traditional tried and
tested system the process of democracy is threatened because incumbent
regimes have or are perceived to have a clear advantage.
It is up to politicians to capture the imagination
of the public. That is the only safe way to increase democracy
and increase the numbers of voters.
Councillor Alan Thompson.
Leader, Wansbeck Liberal Democrat Group
Lord Rennard's Speech at Second Reading
in the Lords on the European and Local Election Pilots Bill—
8 January 2004 (POS B/P 02)
"My Lords, my overall view of the Bill
is that, at present and on balance, it may put forward as many
problems for our democratic system as it puts forward solutions.
It proposes a mechanism for changes to voting systems that are,
I think, at least premature. Since those advocating changes also
advocate safeguards, and those safeguards cannot all be in place
in time for elections in June, I am not convinced that the changes
should be made now. There are also significant other problems
with experiments such as all-postal voting elections that I shall
address.
But first, perhaps I may say that I believe
that experimentation is important in voting methods. My party
and I have generally supported the principle of pilot projects.
It is particularly welcome to us that the Electoral Commission,
whose establishment we so strongly supported, is able to put forward
proposals independently of the Government and parties. But it
is still for Parliament to approve changes. Wherever possible,
changes to voting systems should carry greater consensus than
simply the support of the governing party.
By combining this year's elections, a major
electoral experiment has already been agreed for this year. It
is one that my party and I wholly support, even though a significant
number of colleagues in local government had strong views that
it would not be in their interests to do so. Nevertheless, we
supported the Local Government Act 2003, allowing the postponement
of the local and the London elections from May to June. We thought
that it would be far better to have one polling day for all the
elections rather than to have two sets of elections five weeks
apart, which is something that undoubtedly contributed to the
voter fatigue that resulted in the 24% turnout in the European
elections of 1999.
We would have supported a significant further
level of experimentation had the Government shown willingness
to learn some of the lessons from the unpopularity of the closed
lists in the 1999 elections and had decided to allow voters to
have slightly more freedom in choosing, if they wanted, to rearrange
the order of the lists presented to them by the parties in the
European elections. Giving more power to the voter and less to
the parties must be good for democracy and good for participation.
But we did not see government willingness to consider what I believe
would have been a very worthwhile experiment this time around.
Incidentally, it seems strange to me that we
are dealing with an issue today that, perhaps, could have been
dealt with earlier when we were considering the Bill on European
elections extending representation to the European Parliament
to the people of Gibraltar. It seems that there must have been
somewhere in the process of government a last minute change of
mind about the issue of postal voting in 2004. I fear now that
at this late stage we are in danger of acting in haste with insufficient
time to prepare for experimental methods of election by 10 June,
especially if the Government-as they may-seek to go further than
the Electoral Commission has recommended and try to adopt postal
voting in the third pilot region.
Indeed, in discussions with Ministers about
the principle of the elections being combined on 10 June, I thought
that it was clearly understood that the combining of the European,
the local and the London elections this year would be the only
departure from previous practice, and that the issue of all-postal
voting in certain regions, as a further level of experimentation
at the same time, would not be raised at all by the Government.
I wonder whether the Minister might explain this apparent late
change in mind.
On the general issue of experimentation in this
year's elections, my own representation to the Electoral Commission
argued for consideration to be given to a different area of experimentation
altogether. The further experiment that I would like to see this
year is weekend voting. Before we consider issues such as widespread
extension of compulsory postal voting, we should have had a good
opportunity to look at weekend voting. The elections in June would
have been an ideal opportunity to do that.
Rather than opening polling stations between
7 am and 10 pm on a Thursday—often causing disruption to
many schools and, therefore, disruption to pupils' education—it
would have been practical to find suitable venues to open during
the day on a Saturday and Sunday giving a choice of polling day,
and over a period of time, when many more people are free than
on a week day.
I understand that returning officers and electoral
officials were consulted but were not enthusiastic about issues
such as storing ballot boxes securely on the Saturday night. But
I do not believe that that problem could not have been overcome.
The interests of the voter should be paramount. That is the experiment
that should be in this Bill.
Perhaps I may now turn to some of the problems
with all-postal-vote elections or `compulsory postal voting',
as I prefer to call it, as put forward in the Bill. Some of these
problems need to be addressed before there is much more widespread
all-postal voting. Some issues are fundamentally problematic.
The trade-off between increased turnout and other problems with
the democratic process may not be worth it. Of course, all-postal
voting has generally raised turnout, but it has not always done
so. The health of our democratic process cannot be judged by turnout
alone. One of my principal concerns with all-postal-vote elections
is the lack of secrecy for many voters. The Secret Ballot Act
1872 was one of the most important democratic reforms in the history
of this country. There is a danger that compulsory postal voting
undermines it fatally. It may even be an issue under Article 3
of the European Convention on Human Rights, and this should be
scrutinised carefully by the Joint Committee on Human Rights.
Of course, a voter can do what he or she likes
in the privacy of the polling booth. Members of the same family
may go to the polling station together, but they vote individually
in conditions of secrecy. When the postal votes all arrive at
home, there is no such guarantee. In my experience, I have often
canvassed voters who have said, for example, that they vote for
our party but that their husband does not know. It may be possible
for them to keep that information from their husbands in future,
but they may find themselves voting in another way altogether
for the sake of a quiet life. The principle of a secret ballot
would have been destroyed.
Concerns about privacy apply to all voters,
but they have been raised by organisations representing disabled
people. Thanks to changes introduced a few years ago, a blind
person may be assisted in a polling station by a presiding officer
on how to fill in their postal vote. But a blind person receiving
a postal vote at home may not be able to vote without a visitor,
a friend, a relative or someone filling in the ballot paper for
them, and so undermining their right to secrecy. Homes in multi-occupation
are a particular problem, as raised by the noble Baroness, Lady
Hanham. In areas where many students live, or in areas such as
where the Brent East by-election recently took place, I have often
delivered literature to houses with a huge number of residents-sometimes
in double figures. How do we really know what happens when 10
postal votes are left in a communal hallway? It is often the case
in those places that the 10 residents are a different 10 people
from those on the electoral register to whom postal votes will
have been sent.
There may be very few problems in many areas
and there may have been few problems with the pilot schemes so
far. However, what would have happened in a closely fought and
important by-election such as that in Brent East last September
if it had been an all-postal vote election? I canvassed large
numbers of households in that election, where many people told
me that the person who was on the electoral register had moved
away from the district. In an all-postal vote election, a postal
vote would still have been delivered to the previous occupant.
A huge concern for me about the principle of
all-postal vote elections is connected to the timing of the election
campaign. Traditionally, parties and candidates, the media and
all those involved in the election campaign, including the Royal
Mail, who deliver to election addresses, know that their work
should be completed by polling day. However, in an all-postal
vote election, ballot papers are supposed to be delivered at least
one week before polling day and usually two to three weeks in
advance. Experience from pilot schemes suggests that most voters
return their ballot papers almost immediately after receipt.
When are people best able to judge between the
parties and election candidates? Surely it must be when they have
the most information at their disposal and have been subject to
the most intensive campaigning and debate between the parties
and candidates. That time is on polling day and not two or three
weeks before it. There is no doubt that many election results
would have been different if voting had taken place a week or
two earlier. Perhaps the 1992 election might have been a totally
different story and Neil Kinnock might have become Prime Minister
if the ballot had taken place a week or two earlier. Perhaps some
would have welcomed that and others regretted it, but the results
of elections will change if one changes the time at which people
cast their votes. It is unhealthy to change the time at which
people cast their votes to a period that is two or three weeks
before the normal polling day and before the parties have been
subject to proper campaigning scrutiny. We will reach a situation
where people will have voted before the media have covered the
election issues, before the parties have delivered their literature,
before the election broadcasts have been transmitted and before
there has been a proper and democratic discussion of the issues.
Is that wise for the health of a democracy?
There are also many logistical difficulties
with the all-postal vote process. Above all, we may reach a point
where politicians avoid the detailed scrutiny of an election campaign
by having voters cast their votes at such an early point. Political
parties and agents are often familiar with the failures of the
Royal Mail to deliver election addresses by polling day. That
failure was widespread in the 1999 European elections, when the
Royal Mail was given for the first time the task of delivering
perhaps two or three million election addresses across entire
regions. It will be asked to carry out a similar task in this
process. How can we be sure of its capacity to deliver postal
votes in time for them to be completed, posted back and counted?
Let us look at some of the lessons from the
pilot schemes. Last year, hundreds of voters in Stockport were
disenfranchised by a failure to deliver their postal votes. In
Liverpool at the last general election, a wildcat postal strike
meant that many postal voters were simply unable to return their
votes. In one ward in the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley last
May, 52 postal votes were delivered only on polling day itself
and a further 58 were delivered after the election was over. There
is no proper redress in our system for those voters or for affected
candidates. Last month, the candidate who lost that election by
a mere 40 votes failed in his legal action to have the election
result overturned and re-run on the grounds that the returning
officer had done enough by giving the postal votes to the Royal
Mail. The fact that they had not been delivered to the voters
could not change the result of the election. In a by-election
in the Hill Rise ward of Islington last October, industrial action
was taking place in the Royal Mail and a large proportion of postal
voters was disenfranchised. Concern was expressed at the time
and assurances were given by the Royal Mail that special measures
would apply to make sure that postal votes were returned in time
to be counted. However, one in three postal votes was returned
to the returning officer after polling day and too late to be
counted.
I ask noble Lords to imagine a national election
where one-third of the votes was not counted. It would make the
conduct of the 2000 US election in Florida seem like a model of
perfection, with its hanging chads and all its other problems,
if it became known that so many votes in our system were not counted
because of a postal problem. We have witnessed recent industrial
action within the Royal Mail and we know that an election that
uses postal votes may be a tempting target for some people.
Of course, there are some answers to some of
those problems. A declaration of identity, with a witness signature,
to accompany a postal vote may not an infallible means of avoiding
fraud, but it is a necessary minimum safeguard and acts as a significant
deterrent to fraud. That is one change that could be made to the
Bill. There should be no all-postal vote experimental elections
in June without that as a minimum safeguard. In the longer run,
the Electoral Commission is right to argue for individual registration
of voters, to be accompanied by a signature of that voter, thereby
enabling at least a cursory check to be made that a postal vote
has been returned by the person to whom it was dispatched.
More use of postal voting should mean a change
in our system to allow more days after the normal polling day
for postal ballots to be returned and counted. It was not until
the scandal of the theft of the US presidential election in 2000
erupted that many voters there became aware that absentee ballots
were still supposed to be counted several days after polling day
and usually after what is called the `result' is known. In Australia,
for example, absent votes can be counted up to two weeks after
polling day. The votes cast at a polling station are counted and
declared immediately. The postal votes are then counted as they
come in, each day, for a two-week period thereafter and the results
published on a website. The final outcome in a close election
may not be known for two weeks.
For election junkies such as me, it is quite
fascinating to watch the changing results. I remember seeing an
Australian politician destroy her career by denouncing her electorate
and her party for voting her out, only to find that the postal
voters actually made the difference and that she had been elected
by a small margin. That system may of course leave a short period
of uncertainty about the final outcome of the election. However,
more importantly, it helps overcome the fundamental problem of
people having either to vote before they have experienced the
campaign or to vote so late that their vote is not counted.
Postal votes should not be dispatched until
seven days before polling day at the earliest. There should then
be week for them to be counted afterwards. We should also have
systems that ensure that postal voters do not lose out on the
last week of campaigning. There should be a facility for election
candidates to have a sample of their literature included in the
postal vote mailing.
I have expressed strong reservations about the
extension of all-postal voting or `compulsory postal voting'.
I have suggested some measures that may mitigate the problems,
only some of which could be in place by June. The Bill must therefore
be amended to provide for what safeguards can reasonably be provided
in postal ballots, such as a declaration of identity and a witness
signature.
The Government should also indicate that they
will go no further than the Electoral Commission has suggested
in having the two proposed all-postal pilots in the northern and
east Midlands regions. I welcome their acceptance of the Electoral
Commission's view that experimentation with Internet, text and
telephone voting is not appropriate at this stage. The evidence
so far is that there are problems with the secrecy and reliability
of those methods, but no compensating benefits in the form of
increased turn-outs.
In conclusion, the fundamental problems that
we are seeking to address lie rather with ourselves as politicians
and our political system than with particular voting technologies.
We should not lose sight of that."
Lord Christopher Rennard MBE
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