Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
MR SAM
YOUNGER, MR
PETER WARDLE,
MR ANDREW
SCALLAN AND
MR ANDY
O'NEIL
13 NOVEMBER 2007
Q80 Mr Devine: Are you confirming
that no-one in the Electoral Commission has ever been a candidate
or an election agent, no-one has ever been involved in the nitty-gritty
from the start of an election, the six months before, the four
weeks of the election, the count and the aftermath of the election,
no-one has been in that situation?
Mr Younger: They have been involved
as returning officers but by law they cannot have been involved
as political party agents because that is what Parliament legislated
for.
Q81 Mr Devine: For ten years?
Mr Younger: For ten years.
Mr Wardle: I can tell you that
none of them, because they would be breaking the law if they had,
had done it in the ten years before they were appointed as Electoral
Commissioners. I cannot conclusively say that anybody 30 years
ago did not do that but to the best of my knowledge that is the
case.
Q82 Mr Walker: Why do we need e-counting?
What is wrong with the traditional method of doing it, it seems
to work, it does not seem to fail and everybody seems to get on
with it? Why do we need e-counting?
Mr Younger: The argument for the
e-counting of paper ballots has been based on the complexity of
elections. A first-past-the-post election where you are simply
counting one X is one thing, but the Scottish returning officers
in particular who went across and looked at a manual count of
an STV election in Northern Ireland said, "Logistically it
is a nightmare to do that manually, we ought to be looking to
electronic means". I think it is a function of the complexity
of the elections. That said, as Peter Wardle has been saying,
you need to get the underpinning of it absolutely right if it
is to go forward.
Q83 Mr Walker: But there was not
a problem in Northern Ireland. It may have been a nightmare but
nobody was disenfranchised from the vote, is that right?
Mr Younger: No, but there is no
evidence that anybody was disenfranchised from the vote by the
e-counting system itself.
Q84 Mr Davidson: We do not know that.
Can I just follow this up because with e-counting, as I understand
the position, the ballot papers which are ruled out are not then
examined individually by a human being. Is that correct? That
was certainly the effect in Glasgow.
Mr Scallan: That is not entirely
the case.
Q85 Mr Davidson: What do you mean,
it is either not the case or it is the case. I asked is every
ballot paper which is ruled out seen at some stage in the process
by a human being.
Mr Scallan: Not every ballot paper.
Q86 Mr Davidson: Thank you.
Mr Scallan: It would depend. In
Scotland it was not. Blank ballot papers were dealt with through
the machine rather than being adjudicated by a person.
Q87 Mr Davidson: In relation to those
ballots which were being ruled out for some other reason, my understanding,
certainly having been at the hall in Glasgow, was that there was
nobody, certainly from our political party, who could see those.
Mr Scallan: Depending on the arrangements
that the individual local returning officers had established for
letting people know how the count was going to be managed, there
would have been an opportunity for the returning officer or one
of their staff to make the decision and there is also the power
that exists at a manual count for people to object to a rejected
ballot paper.
Q88 Mr Davidson: There was not a
manual count though, that is the point I am making. One of my
difficulties about e-counting, leaving aside the question that
the ballot paper in Glasgow had to be adjusted to fit the machines,
which is quite an interesting way of looking at how things are
operated, is that my understanding in Glasgow was that there was
a whole raft of ballot papers ruled out which no-one was then
able to see. Have you subsequently examined, or do you intend
to examine, those papers to clarify whether or not a normal human
being might have interpreted them in a different way from the
machine?
Mr Wardle: No, we do not because
in the UK, and it is the same in Scotland as the rest of the UK,
there is a process for challenging the results of elections. If
a political party or a candidate believes that the count is—
Q89 Mr Davidson: No, I am not challenging
the result. I am not challenging the result, what I am saying
is I wish to seek clarification as to whether or not you are seeking
to clarify whether or not all the papers which were ruled out
were in fact correctly ruled out, and I think you are saying to
me that, no, you have not and, no, you do not intend to.
Mr Wardle: No, we do not.
Q90 Mr Davidson: Is that not a bit
sloppy?
Mr Wardle: No.
Mr Younger: No, I do not think
it is. What we are looking at in terms of this and in terms of
any e-counting in the future is our policy and our approach will
be that there should be human adjudication certainly of every
ballot on which there is a mark if it has a doubt. The only place
where there is an issue is whether the machine can and should
be relied on to adjudicate where there is no mark on the ballot
paper at all.
Mr Wardle: The other policy point
on which the Commission will be quite clear, and this is an issue
that has arisen in manual counts as well and some of you will
have seen this in manual counts, is returning officers vary greatly
in the way in which they give access to parties, candidates and
their agents to observe the process of adjudication. The Commission
is quite clear that it is a crucial part of the process for the
reasons you have hinted at in terms of public confidence in the
results of the election and the way in which the returning officer
has administered the account. I was talking earlier about some
criteria which must be fulfilled before e-counting is used and
I am quite sure the Commission will want to see a much more open
and transparent process in place for candidates and agents to
observe the process that is being used so that every agent has
a very clear opportunity to check what the returning officer's
staff are doing when they rule out any ballot in the same way
as it is in place for manual counting, and if that cannot be done
then e-counting has got problems.
Q91 Mr Devine: I think you are getting
the strong message that we are opposed to e-counting. You said
that nobody was disenfranchised but I just wonder how you can
claim that. We lost a council seat by one vote and we could not
get a recount, which four years ago we could have. If a vote was
as close as that we would have activists, as would all the other
political parties, looking over the count as it was taking place.
How can you say that nobody was disenfranchised?
Mr Younger: My understanding is,
and again I do not know for every constituency, the approach should
have been that every ballot paper that had a mark on it should
have been there for human adjudication, not for machine adjudication.
Q92 Mr Hamilton: Mr Younger has indicated
something I did not know, and we were refused on the night, and
that is you could view the count and after it had taken place
you could challenge that count. That was not allowed, as I understood
it, because of the electronic system. What happened was the officers
went through it electronically and all parties had a substantial
number of people where the majority was less than the wasted amount
of papers. I thought it was logical we could challenge that but
we were refused access to do that. I think that happened all through
Scotland but you are saying something different, you are saying
you could challenge that.
Mr Wardle: I think there is a
question here about timing. The way the system works at a count
is that agents and candidates have the right to challenge before
the result is declared.
Mr Hamilton: That was not given that
night.
Mr Davidson: You were not allowed to
see the papers.
Mr Devine: You cannot challenge what
you do not see.
Chairman: Colleagues, we cannot resolve
this issue within the next four or five minutes. This is something
that needs serious consideration and we can probably have a meeting
with the Electoral Commission or some other mechanism within the
parties on this issue.
Mr MacNeil: Given the problems that have
been flagged up by members of the Committee here and the fact
that you support the change to the Electoral Commission's make-up
from the ten to a five year rule and, given what we have just
heard, would you be supportive of one of Gould's central recommendations
that the control of this election, or subsequent Scottish elections,
be transferred quite rightfully to the body that it concerns,
namely the Scottish Government?
Q93 Mr Hamilton: That does not make
any sense.
Mr Younger: The constitutional
arrangements are not for us to have an opinion on. What we want
to see is that there is proper co-ordination and planning under
whatever recommendations there are.
Q94 Mr MacNeil: Do you support Mr
Gould's recommendation?
Mr Younger: We have not finally
responded to Mr Gould's recommendation in that area. We do support
the need for there to be proper co-ordination and proper timing,
but I am not yet in a position to say whether we support that
particular recommendation.
Q95 Ms Clark: Do you support the
establishment of a chief returning officer for Scotland?
Mr Wardle: Again, that is a good
solution if it works and if it meets the criteria that Ron Gould
has set out about accountability, co-ordination, planning, supply
and management, and voter education. If that solution met all
those criteria it could work for Scotland. It is important to
note that Ron Gould himself made clear that he has not looked
beyond the 2007 Scottish elections. That particular solution leaves
some questions unanswered about co-ordination across the UK at,
for example, a European parliamentary election or an election
to Westminster. From a UK-wide perspective, and we are an organisation
that operates across the UK as well as in Scotland, it could also
raise questions about different systems if you look at Northern
Ireland, London, possibly a chief returning officer in Scotland,
and you could end up with some fragmentation inadvertently. What
I would like to see is a wider debate on how that sort of solution
for Scotland would work in the wider UK context and, indeed, whether
there are lessons from what Ron Gould suggested for Scotland that
ought to be picked up elsewhere in the UK.
Q96 Ms Clark: If a person took on
this post, would that not mean that some of the functions may
be functions that would be taken over by the Electoral Commission
itself?
Mr Wardle: That is one of the
issues, as Sam Younger mentioned earlier on, and it raises consequential
questions about the Commission, either the relationship of a chief
returning officer to the Commission and the future role of the
Commission in relation to how elections are run, and we have discussed
some of the issues, whether the Commission has the right role
in relation to spotting problems and being able to intervene rather
than simply talk about them, and conversely, at the same time,
if a chief returning officer were established some of the things
the Commission does, and which Ron Gould said the Commission did
quite well, in relation to public education would be taken away
from the Commission. Those are good examples of why the debate
probably needs to be widened out a little before we take final
decisions.
Q97 Ms Clark: Have you looked at
other countries and seen whether something like this works anywhere
else?
Mr Wardle: Yes, we have. There
are a range of options and those are precisely the sort of things
we would want to feed into that debate. It is difficult to find
a complete parallel for the UK and its devolution settlement.
The models range from something very like the devolved arrangements
we have in the UK at the moment to countries like Canada and Australia
where for federal elections there is a national elections body
which would meet some of the tests of providing greater accountability
and consistency.
Mr Hamilton: That is an electoral system
that covers the whole country but what we have in Scotland are
four different electoral systems. This comes back to the point
Mr Walker was making, and that is to simplify the system. It does
not matter what we do, at the end of the day if we have complicated
systems it is going to confuse the electorate.
Q98 Mr Davidson: I think a simple
first-past-the-post would be far easier. Can I just clarify the
question of counting and whether or not you support the idea of
counting being done on the next day.
Mr Younger: Certainly in relation
to the combined elections that we saw in Scotland in May, that
was a recommendation we made on the basis of some research we
did which was not taken up, and we would stick by that as that
would have been the right thing in the Scottish context. We will
be looking harder at whether there should be a presumption. The
practice is different in different places already. If you look
at local elections, say, in England, a number of returning officers
now count the next day, particularly because of the growth of
postal voting and the need to have late incoming postal voting.
The main principle that we need to base it on is that the priority
needs to be the integrity of the count and the right result and
its accuracy rather than necessarily speed, and that should be
the guidance.
Q99 Mr Davidson: Presumably that
would allow time for a more thorough examination of papers that
were disallowed?
Mr Younger: Our view would be
that there always needs to be time for there to be proper adjudication
of any doubtful ballot papers.
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