Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40
- 59)
WEDNESDAY 2 NOVEMBER 2005
SAM YOUNGER
AND PETER
WARDLE
Q40 Barbara Keeley: There are quite
a few questions on individual registration. You have already referred
to that. Are there any other provisions in the Bill, things that
are not there or matters you would like to see extended or changed?
Is that the key one?
Sam Younger: The key one is individual
registration. There are a number of others where there are provisions
that I know have been subject to debate and questioning in Parliament
and where I think there is a debate to be had and a judgment to
be made. When it comes to registration, because of issues of principle
but probably even more in terms of urgency, we feel that are the
issues of security underpinning that. That is the key area where
we feel what is there in the Bill does not at present go far enough.
I am happy to elaborate on that if you like.
Q41 Barbara Keeley: I move on to
thinking about registration, there are a number of points. When
we had a Second Reading of the Bill, the Minister of State referred
to places in the country which he called democracy deserts where
there was low registration and a low turnout. Is that helpful?
I think people are talking here about registration in some places
reaching crisis level. Terms like that are going to be used. Is
that a useful way for us to start thinking about it, that there
are spots in the country where we do not have the same democratic
involvement? Those are serious issues that we need to look at
in some depth.
Sam Younger: I think they are
very serious issues. That is one of the reasons behind particularly
the research that we published in September on under-registration,
which was done on the basis of looking at the comparison with
census figures. Yes, it goes back, but it is the first time we
have been able to get some really authoritative figures cross-referenced
against other sources for some years. That does show that the
percentage of non-registration for England and Wales—we
have not yet been able to get the figures for Scotland, those
will follow, and Northern Ireland is in a different position—was
going up to 9%. That is a lot of people, 3.5 million in England
and Wales. It is a very critical area. It is one that we take
seriously and we are very pleased to see in the Bill a number
of things that we think are important in terms of encouraging
registration.
Q42 Barbara Keeley: There are other
points where that figure might be discussed. I have heard colleagues
talking about wards and polling districts where the figure may
be 20%. People say there are some streets where nobody was registered
in every other house. We are not really talking about less than
10%; we are talking about much more than that, are we not?
Sam Younger: That is fair enough.
The detail of the research we did shows inner city areas in particular.
There are geographical areas of under-registration; there are
also particular categories of people under-registered. One of
the things that is important about that research is that it does
identify some particular targets for particular campaigns to get
people on to the register. We know we are going to be dealing,
even in the best of all possible worlds, with what are limited
resources and will always be limited resources to do this. We
hoped there would be a good deal more there for registration than
there has been up to now and different approaches to registration.
Nevertheless, it is terribly important that this has to be done
particularly area by area to target that effort.
Q43 Barbara Keeley: Should that be
the priority now in encouraging participation in turnout? I think
there is a view that there has been a focus on turnout and participation
perhaps at the expense of registration?
Sam Younger: After all, registration
is the precondition for turnout, is it not? It is not a precondition
necessarily for what the turnout percentage might look like, but
in the real world it is a precondition for the numbers that are
going to be in a position to go out and vote, so it is absolutely
critical. That is why our own view has been that, when it comes
to the system, there is tension at certain points between participation
and security. You have to make a judgment about where you are
on that continuum. It is important in what we are putting forward
as necessary for integrity that we make sure that, parallel to
that, there is an enormous effort to make sure you keep people
on the register. That said, we are very conscious of the points
made in the Second Reading debate, and indeed elsewhere, about
the difficulties of registration. Partly as a result of that and
what we know to have been those issues, we have been looking at
whether there is another way. We do not regard pilots as satisfactory,
and that is, above all, because we think it is urgent to get something
in place. The problem with pilots is that it takes a year or two
for anything to be shown. One item we are looking at is: are there
any other ways of delivering the sort of security benefit we want
while minimising the effect on the register? There are one or
two things worth nothing and perhaps putting in for consideration
in that context. We have said that in terms of pure individual
registration, which is what we think ought to be the end game
that one could move back from, in the rest of GB we do not feel
national insurance numbers are something we should be asking people
to provide at registration if we are looking at the comparison
with the Northern Ireland model. Although in human rights and
data protection terms individual forms on the register are better
than household forms, we certainly would not go off the wall if
household forms were a way of smoothing that change. One of the
things we thought might be worth looking at as a transitional
phase towards individual registration that would deliver what
is most urgent, in terms of the security underpinning, is whether
it is worth considering, as it were, extending the fields in the
existing registration form to have a signature and a date of birth;
you would not require that signature and date of birth in order
for people to be on the register, but those details would have
to be provided before somebody was issued with a postal vote.
That is one way, because we are very conscious of the danger of
people dropping off and there are enough people who are not there
already. I just note that to the Committee as one possible way
through the dilemma.
Q44 Barbara Keeley: The sensitivity
about this for a lot of people, both locally and nationally, is
that where other countries have tired individual registration,
it has caused a drop of 10%. For many people a figure like that
is their majority, either as local councillors or as members here.
If you are talking about a period of a number of years when people
will disappear, it can clearly be seen that, based on that, elections
will be lost. It is understandable that that is the case. That
is the concern. You seem to be saying that if personal identifiers
include signature and date of birth, that is something which would
be tried on a basis that is not mandatory but people will start
to get used to it.
Sam Younger: One of our starting
points is that there is a real issue about a lack of security
underpinning particularly postal voting, and a real issue of public
confidence interest in this area. If we were in a situation where
we only had elections every five or six years, then piloting and
seeing how that turned out, and then seeing whether we implemented
it, would be viable. The problem we have, being realistic about
it, is that the first canvas in which one might pilot this would
be 2006. Then you would need to do it again in 2007 in order to
get any feel. By then, you would be in danger of moving into another
general election, and either rolling out a completely new system,
if it has worked in those pilot areas, just before a general election,
or, alternatively, not rolling it out because it has not worked
terribly well. Then, it seems to me, we would be in a position
at the next general election much as we were at this one. That
is why I think we say that if the priority is in terms of time—and
we would still hold to the principle of individual registration
anyway but it is not the principle that is the driver of the urgency—one
way of doing it may be to think about encouraging people to provide
their signature and date of birth. You do not throw them off the
register if they do not provide that over a period, but you say
there would have to be something that says that if you apply for
a postal vote, it is going to be made clear on that application
that these details will be entered on the electoral register and
will be used for future comparison. After all, it is fair to say
that the provision of a signature and date of birth—and
I do think the national insurance number is a bit different—is
not rocket science; it is relatively simply and people are used
to doing it in many contexts. In that position, I would suspect
that over a relatively short period we would probably find that
the vast majority of people had provided those details and, as
it were, at that point you could move in that direction. I throw
that out. I would want to say that we would still prefer to move
to something whereby we would call for individual access. I am
trying to think of a way through concerns.
Q45 Barbara Keeley: Could we not
start to see a range of pilots, though, as a testing ground for
this? There is, on the one hand, great sensitivity about a big
drop in registration and losing 10% of people off a register which
we understand already has four or five million people missing
off it. The notion of losing another half a million is a serious
issue and a very serous issue in local places where that will
make the difference to a lot of people between winning and losing
an election. Would it not be possible to specify a number of pilots,
which would then test the effect? There is a concern that it would
have an effect. I have heard colleagues say that they do not think
we have recovered in registration terms from the poll tax and
people going off for that reason. Do you not see that having pilots
is then a set of stepping stones and could be the way forward?
Sam Younger: I return, in one
sense, to the point I made before that I think there is urgency
about this. If we go down the pilot route, however good the pilot,
we are not going to be in a position to have underpinned that
security and reached that, even over an election cycle. That is
our problem with that. It would be ludicrous for us to have anything
against pilots per se. Were one, for example, to go down
the road of making provision for a signature and a date of birth
but not make that compulsory on the register, that still would
not prevent the possibility of running a pilot for compulsory
individual registration in some places. The point of the transition
proposition is to try to make sure you are in a position where
you get security underpinning universally across the country for
postal voting without losing significant numbers of people off
the register. In our view, there could be a role for piloting
some different things. I suppose I go back to saying that the
one thing that we would not want is to go into the next general
election with really no universal underpinning of postal voting
as in the 2005 election. That is the main point.
Q46 Barbara Keeley: Given that sensitivity,
and particularly perhaps in local authorities where there are
the lowest rates of registration now, and I have said we are looking
at a situation where there is 20% or 30% in some areas and more
in some more localised areas, how can that be dealt with? Cleary
it would be very difficult for those local authorities if they
are required to do something which is going to make the situation
worse than it currently is? Do you have any ideas about how that
can be handled, where things are already very difficult and registration
levels are very low? In my constituency, I think the registration
level is 95% and we would not be so concerned about it. In other
local constituencies it is much lower than that.
Sam Younger: I suppose it is fair
to say it is in acknowledgment of that issue that I mentioned
the possible transitional notion. It is worth underscoring that
there is much in the Bill that does encourage registration and
a lot is going to be about what the resources are and how well
those resources are targeted. It seems to me that allowing people
to register much closer to the date of an election is a very real
encouragement to getting people on the register. What we are looking
at is whether that acknowledges the problem while trying to get
the best of all worlds by delivering the security underpinning
that we also think is right. There is a tension there. There is
no point in denying that there is a tension. It is a question
of where on that spectrum you go.
Peter Wardle: If you take those
constituencies where you have very high levels of under-registration,
leaving aside the timing point Sam has described, if you have
a two-year pilot, effectively at around the summer of 2008 the
Government would have to take a decision on whether to roll it
out now in full, possibly for a general election in early 2009,
or whether nothing can be put in place. Either of those situations
is undesirable in terms of the run-up to the next general election
but, if you take those constituencies with high levels of under-registration,
then the transition approach that Sam has just described would
allow the focus to be entirely on getting people onto the register.
The signature and date of birth need not be a barrier for those
people because the important thing is to get those people who
have never voted before and never registered before to the polling
stations. Postal voting might be something that comes later. If
community postal voting is important, then the focus of the campaign
would be different and it would be about encouraging people to
give what are, after all, two relatively straightforward bits
of information, signature and date of birth, in order to give
them the flexibility either of voting in person or having a postal
vote. There is the opportunity there of simply saying, "To
get you on the register, we are not going to erect any barriers
and you will still be able to get to the polling station. You
will not drop off the register". By contrast, if you had
the sort of piloting that is being discussed at the moment, if
the pilot were run in that particular local authority, then it
is quite likely that there would be some compulsion about the
signature and date of birth. Therefore, you would have that barrier.
What we are trying to look at is a way that meets the concern
about not having postal votes anywhere in the country, coming
in without some way of checking the identity, but also allowing
areas of severe under-representation to have people on the register
without necessarily having to go that extra mile in terms of the
identifiers.
Q47 Barbara Keeley: As a final point,
and thanks for taking these out of order because I have to leave
soon, I take what you said about pilots: if pilots go ahead, what
role would the Commission take on evaluation that?
Sam Younger: The Commission's
position is that our role in all these areas is to advise Government
and Parliament but to work with whatever Government and Parliament
enacts. If that involved us in a role of evaluating pilots, that
is what we would do.
Peter Wardle: That is what the
Bill suggests would happen, that we would be involved in the piloting.
We do have a lot of experience in evaluating pilots that have
taken place between 2002 and 2005.
Q48 Jeremy Wright: May I take you
back briefly to the principle of registration? The argument that
Government makes, and we heard it from the Lord Chancellor when
he gave evidence to us, is that they do not like the idea of individual
registration—we are making some of the points that have
already been made—because they conclude it will result in
a drop in registration. One of the main ways in which that may
happen is because at the moment with household registration 50%
of those in perhaps the 18-24 age bracket are registered by mum
and dad, whereas they would not bother doing it themselves. We
are all clear about your position, that you believe individual
registration to be the right way and you would like to see this
carried forward in a clause. I just want to try and get a sense
of your reasoning in that regard. Do you accept that the Government's
concerns are valid, that there is a worry about that and you simply
regard your perception of the advantages of individual registration
as outweighing those concerns, or do you think the Government's
concerns are not valid in that regard?
Sam Younger: As was indicated
by answers to the previous questions, I think our view is that
there are legitimate concerns there. Frankly, I think it would
be absurd not to think there are legitimate concerns when you
look at the incidence of under-registration, however much one
might say you cannot have an absolute read-across. We have had
a very significant pilot of individual registration in Northern
Ireland. Yes, there was a drop but not as big a real drop as the
initial 10% would indicate. While one cannot put an absolute figure
on it, a goodly part of that was actually names that should not
have been on the register anyway, so it may be a more limited
issued. We recognise that that is a real issue. You are right
that, looked at on this spectrum of absolute security at one end
of it and, as it were, no barrier to participation at the other,
we believe that two things, an individual signature and a date
of birth, provided on the register are where the right balance
is struck. You are right to draw attention to the fact that it
is a matter of principle. I do think it is quite wrong in this
day and age that it is not the individual who makes the decision
about whether they are on the electoral register. I think the
best example of this is that I am in a position at the moment
where I can sign up my wife and son on the electoral register;
I could sign up for them to have their details sold to commercial
organisations and they have no say in the matter. I do not like
that. That said, I think we would acknowledge that the security
underpinnings of increasing postal voting are the key to the urgency
of needing to have something in place now.
Q49 Jeremy Wright: Do you have any
sense of how much of a drop in registration you think might come
about if individual registration were to be the way we did it?
Sam Younger: We have obviously
had thoughts about that and thought about it quite a lot. We have
not tried to put a figure on it. There are so many different variables
involved. One would say that probably, compared to Northern Ireland,
the real drop is less than 10% in the first instance. There are
a number of measures that can make sure you do not, certainly
over a cycle of a year or two, lose large numbers off the register.
They have reinstated the carryover in Northern Ireland. In the
rest of Great Britain, probably one would include the carryover
in the arrangements so that you did not lose people who did not
register every year; you would allow people to register close
to the date of the election. I think that is important and there
is a duty in terms of maximising the register. There is no reason,
if the resources are there even as a one-off, that if you once
brought this in you could not have your regular canvas and then
target on a re-canvas those areas where the register was deficient
in the same year, in December or January, immediately following.
There are a number of measures that we feel could effectively
mitigate the possibilities of a downward move. Incidentally, with
good campaigning at local authority level and more widely, I think
there is a chance that that in itself could begin to get some
of the non-registered onto the register. We are wary of putting
a figure on it because in a sense you are damned if you do and
you are damned if you do not. Either you put up the spectre of
some massive figure that you cannot really back up or you risk
looking absurdly over-optimistic about what will happen. I think
it is better to acknowledge that there is a real issue there,
but there are some measures that could mitigate that.
Q50 Mr Khabra: The success of the
democratic system of government depends on how efficient the electoral
registration process is. How do you get people to participate?
This brings to my mind that there is perhaps a need to have compulsory
registration and compulsory voting. This is an old question. On
the other hand, clause 63 of the Bill empowers returning officers
and electoral registration officers to encourage the participation
of electors in the electoral process. Should this be a mandatory
requirement to prevent less active councils from not taking advantage
of the new power? Some of the councils are not as efficient as
they should be. Secondly, what methods would you recommend for
encouraging people to register and vote? Thirdly, what checks
will the Commission make to compare the active campaigns of different
local authorities? The various local authorities have different
abilities to conduct elections and register voters.
Sam Younger: There are two or
three questions there that I will try to answer and Peter can
pick up the gaps. Compulsory registration and voting: in a sense,
there is a degree of compulsion in law on registration at the
moment because it is an offence not to return information requested
by the ERO. I think it is fair to say that the ability to make
registration compulsory actually depends on having some system
whereby it is the individual's responsibility rather than, as
it were, that of a head of household. The other question that
would have to be asked, and it is not something we have an answer
to, if you were going to make registration compulsory, is: have
you got the means to implement and enforce it and the will to
enforce it? I think compulsory voting is different. As a Commission,
we are doing some research at the moment on the experience of
compulsory voting in other countries. My personal view is not
very sympathetic to compulsory voting, as it happens, because
I do think an individual should decide.
Q51 Mr Khabra: What would you say
about multiple occupied properties where there is a landlord or
the property is owned by a company and there are tenants? So far,
the system of registration is that the local authority delivers
an electoral registration form actually addressed to the landlord.
The tenants in the house do not even know that the landlord is
not interested at all in registering voters. Sometimes landlords
are trying to avoid the local authority finding out that the property
is overcrowded or they are cheating the system itself. Why do
you not think that there should be compulsory registration in
such a situation?
Peter Wardle: The issue there
is the way the system works. That is a very good example of one
of the difficulties we have with the household registration system.
It is interesting to note that, in the research we were discussing
earlier about registration, the evidence points both ways about
household registration. In a family, say, where there is a head
of household, father or mother, who registers everybody else in
the household, that is great. There would be a big change for
that family if we moved to a system where there was more individual
registration. In the sort of circumstance you have just described,
the multiple occupation of a building, the fact of household registration
is actually disenfranchising all the occupants of that building.
The only way they can get on to the register is to do it out of
sequence, if you like, in between the annual canvases. This does
not apply just to landlords; the same thing arises in student
accommodation, nursing homes and other areas, where there is a
single building and lots of different independent occupiers. The
significance lies in the decision taken by the person who picks
up the form off the mat, and the form may not necessarily be addressed
to him. He can disenfranchise everybody in that house by throwing
it in the bin. That is one of the arguments that led us to favour
individual registration as right in its own sense. If you then
go a further step and introduce compulsion, you get into the sorts
of issues that Sam was discussing in the earlier question about
whether society is ready for compulsion in this particular area.
So far, we have not done that.
Q52 Mr Khabra: Has the Commission
done any research into the reasons for people not turning up?
There has been a lot of speculation in the press. Nobody knows
exactly the reason why people are not interested in voting. Is
that caused by apathy on the part of voters? Is it the fault of
the politicians or the political parties that there is this lack
of interest in participating in voting?
Sam Younger: We have done a fair
bit of research on this in the context of statutory reporting
at elections and in relation to registration in the report on
under-registration; that has identified some of the reasons people
do not register. The problem with that is that there is no particular
killer reason why individuals do not either register or turn out
to vote; there is a complex range of reasons. One of the things
that I personally take some encouragement from in all the research
we have done is that actually, by and large, the reason people
are not either registering or voting is not so much apathy as
disengagement for one reason or another. In a sense, I think disengagement
is easier to deal with; at least it gives you a starting point
to deal with it. It is not that people do not care about issues
that are affecting them; it is about trying to make sure that
they realise there is a connection between the issues that affect
them and the electoral process and what the political parties
and their candidates are offering them. To move on to one of the
second questions that you asked in terms of how the Commission
goes about encouraging participation—and I think probably
it is fair to say that our advertising did not hit this target
in its earliest incarnations and we have learnt a bit—from
2004 onwards, we have focused on trying to get across the message
that politics affects everything about your life. The strap-line
we have been using is that if you do not do politics, there is
not much you do do. That has created quite a lot of resonance.
Q53 Mr Khabra: The young people are
the least interested. What is the reason for that?
Sam Younger: I think those reasons
of disengagement are very much there. After all, you can see the
passion with which young people talk about issues, involve themselves
in single issues and demonstrate, whatever else it is. I think
it is quite wrong to say that people do not care, but they do
not see the connection between that and elective policies. It
seems to me that is a challenge to everybody. I think it is a
difficult thing. This is not the Commission view but certainly
the indications to me are it is much more difficult in an era
where you do not have quite the same sharp ideological divisions
that there were.
Q54 Mr Khabra: Political education:
the opportunity should be available for youngsters in school to
encourage them to participate in the election which is very important
for the country and for them.
Sam Younger: Absolutely. I think
that is absolutely critical. I think it is important to note with
citizenship education, for example, in a report we put out about
18 months ago, we did not recommend lowering the voting age from
18 to 16 but acknowledged that was something that should be looked
at again in the context of the development of citizenship education
and thought of again, as well as in the context of a more wide
debate about the age of majority generally, but I think citizenship
education is absolutely critical as a role for many organisations.
I think it is fair to say that in getting people to participate
in the end there is no escaping the proposition that the key challenge
is for political parties and candidates to have policies and ideas
that people want to vote for or vote against. That said, there
is an awful lot that other people can do to persuade people of
the importance of the voting process because those people who
are in their legislatures actually make decisions that affect
their lives.
Q55 Jeremy Wright: On that subject,
there is also, of course, a lot that returning officers and registration
officers can, and indeed should, under the Bill do to encourage
people to register and then to vote. Do you have, as the Electoral
Commission, a particular view on the ways in which they ought
to do that? Are you looking at ways in which you can register
best practice and assist various local authorities to notice what
other people are doing well? On the other side of the coin, and
this is an example that I have given to Mr Wardle on a separate
occasion, are there ways in which you can keep a check on what
local authorities are doing? I will give you an example from my
experience at the last election. What happened was the local authority
sent out leaflets saying "please vote" or "don't
forget to vote", words to that effect, but the colour scheme
they chose was bright red and yellow so it looked like a Labour
poster which I do not think was deliberate in the slightest but
you can imagine how exercised my activists got about that. On
that basis, are you going to not only swap best practice but also
keep an eye on what various local authorities are going to do?
Peter Wardle: It is very much
in that sort of field that we are planning to operate with these
standards. One piece of good news that is already in place is
that the ODPM have brought electoral services into their beacon
council schemes, so there is already recognition that there is
some very good work going on by electoral registration officers.
Again, if you look at the research we did and published in September,
one of the things that pointed to was areas where electoral registration
officers in local authorities were using a whole battery of different
methods, and in fact one of the problems the research had was
that there were so many different things going on in some of these
very active local authorities, it was very hard to pinpoint the
ones that were making the most difference. It was clear that where
people were being imaginative, partnering with other bits of the
local authority, partnering with groups in the community who could
act as a way into some of the hard-to-reach groups, they were
getting a lot more success than in some of the sleepier bits of
the country where the local authority was tending to do the same
as it had done every year. I think our approach will very much
be to take the good practice that we recognise already around
the country and, not in a naming and shaming way, because that
is not the power we are going to be given in the Bill anyway,
but in an encouraging way to say "Look here .." it links
in with the point Sam made earlier on about taking some of the
regional expertise and trying to make that more widely available
across the region. That might be one of the ways that we try to
explore, certainly looking at good practice and trying to give
people access to that practice and ourselves acting as a broker
there. We talked about political naivety before in relation to
the Commission and you gave us an interesting example there. I
was talking to one of my colleagues before the session started
who used to work for the Australian Electoral Commission, which
of course does run elections, and the colour of choice on election
day for the Electoral Commission staff was purple and she discovered
you cannot do that here because of the Scottish Nationalists.
It is always difficult to get that sort of thing right but I think
we would try to give that sort of advice, try to get people thinking
a bit more carefully. Just as an aside on that point, one of the
things the Commission has found we have got a lot to add to is
that there are parts of the country where electoral services'
officers and candidates, although they meet at election time,
actually keep themselves rather separate. We found that we can
act as quite a good broker between those two groups because we
recognise that both groups have an interest and need to understand
that they can give offence to the other quite easily, they can
support the other quite easily, and I think this is another area
where there is some education to be done in the standard setting
to help them.
Q56 Chairman: What do you think the
public reaction is going to be when they turn up to polling stations
and find they have to sign for their ballot papers? Does the Commission
have any thoughts on that?
Peter Wardle: It is an interesting
proposal, it is not one of the proposals the Commission made.
When we were thinking about that balance, that spectrum between
participation and security, we took the view that to require people
on every occasion to sign for their ballot paper was a step too
far and it might deter some people for the sorts of reasons we
were talking about before. Looking at the evidence of the scale
of any abuse that was going on in polling stations, as opposed
to political voting, we held back from making that recommendation.
Certainly one of the difficulties with that recommendation as
it is framed in the Bill is it does raise the question of what
you check it against if you are not in a pilot area. It is simply
really a psychological weapon, someone has registered a signature
and something might be done with that signature at some stage.
If you subsequently found that they were not the person they said
they were, probably it would be helpful that they have signed
at some stage implying they were. I am not sure that is quite
what the signature in the polling station legally does. If you
had a system where people had registered a signature and date
of birth on the register, and if you then had some doubts about
their identity when they turned up at the polling station to vote,
then it seems perfectly sensible that some of the questions that
a presiding officer at the polling station might ask are "can
you tell me your date of birth" and if they are still in
doubt "could you provide a specimen signature". It is
easy to see how that would fit in. As it happened, we thought
it was probably going too far to do any more than that and require
people to sign just because they have turned up to vote.
Q57 Chairman: The public also reacted
rather adversely to bar codes, did they not, in the all-postal
pilots? Should there be education, perhaps, on the reason for
that?
Sam Younger: Yes, perhaps putting
something clearly on voter information about why that is there.
What the bar code represents is information that was there anyway
in terms of traceability, that people by and large do not notice
when it is a serial number, a bar code is much more in your face
than that. Interestingly, I think it is something we need to look
at. It is one of the notable things that are noticed by any foreign
observers who come and look at UK elections, they are astonished
that there is traceability of a ballot paper. It is something
we are looking at now as to whether what we have historically
achieved by having that traceability could be achieved in another
way or whether it is important enough to go on with that with
those associated suspicions where a number of members of the public
do say, "So in the end somebody can tell how I voted".
Albeit it is under very severe restriction in terms of the courts,
nevertheless there is a slight discomfort about it. Even though
by and large people say they do not like it when it is drawn to
their attention, most people do not really notice it. Bar codes
they would notice more.
Q58 Jessica Morden: The CORE project:
what level of data sharing will you have between the EROs and
the keepers of the project?
Sam Younger: It is not yet clear
exactly how it is going to be organised or what role the Commission
will be playing in it. I would have thought the data sharing should
be absolute and total among EROs in terms of the register because
part of the great value of CORE—yes, one of the drivers
politically was being able more easily to interrogate the electoral
register for the purposes of donations reporting—is the
ability to use a register where you can consult it intricately
to note things like duplicate applications, to indicate where
somebody needs to come along to register somewhere because they
have moved somewhere else. I think it is a very major step forward
once it is there but it needs to make sure those information sources
are all compatible.
Q59 Jessica Morden: If you do end
up keeping it, being the keeper does it undermine your impartiality?
Sam Younger: I do not see why
it should. I think the one thing I would be very clear about,
and we have not thought about this in detail because it is not
clear what the arrangement is going to be, but were we to be the
keeper we would certainly need to set up something that would
operate to a degree at arm's length, a little bit like the Boundary
Committee for England does on local authority boundaries, which
was our registration committee which would have returning officers,
EROs and others on it as the experts. All I am saying is I do
not want to be drawn into detail and what I have not thought about
closely enough is that there would need to be a difference in
the way we organise ourselves, but I do not see that it should
undermine the independence or impartiality of the Commission.
Peter Wardle: I think it is perhaps
worth noting that the concept as we understand it at the moment
is that the national on-line register will simply be an amalgamation
of all the local registers held by electoral registration officers.
I think it is very unlikely that the Commission will be in a position
of unilaterally taking decisions to add someone or remove someone
from the register, that would be done only at the behest of the
registration officers and our role would be administrative, if
you like, a mechanical role, and maybe it is easier for the keeper
physically to achieve that change. As I understand the concept,
I do not see that it would involve the Commission taking decisions
that were not signed up to by the relevant electoral registration
officer, or officers, concerned.
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