Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240-259)
MR RON
GOULD, CM AND
MR MICHAEL
BODA
15 JANUARY 2008
Q240 Mr Devine: I was in the Republic.
Mr Gould: The Northern Ireland
elections have STV but it is not as complex a formula as it is
in Scotland, and without it you would be lucky to get the results
in a week, it is so complex, so the e-count really is an adjunct
to STV and especially the system that is used in Scotland.
Q241 Chairman: A low turnout is an
issue that has to be addressed. Why do you think that advance
voting in person should be used to increase turnout rather than
the postal votes?
Mr Gould: First of all I would
like to clarify; in no way do we suggest that postal voting be
eliminated, postal voting would remain, but if advance voting
either in the office of the returning officer or in shopping centres
and so on was carried out, first of all I think you would find
that the tendency internationally would be followed here, and
you can see the tendency in the postal vote. If you look at the
fact that the voting turnout is dropping on the one hand, but
on the other hand the advance voting is going up, it means that
fewer and fewer people want to go to the polls or are going to
the polls, they are going for the advance vote, so all we are
saying is that this would supplement the postal vote. My guess
is that if that opportunity was available you would find the postal
vote would be less because people would take advantage of the
advance poll which would reduce the cost, because postal voting
costs are huge, and it would speed up the count because you would
have less manipulation of all these ballots coming in which have
to be checked with the signatures and everything else.
Q242 Chairman: What you are saying
is that you are not discounting the use of postal votes.
Mr Gould: Absolutely not.
Q243 Chairman: But at the same time
you want another form of advance voting in person, which can help.
Mr Gould: Giving the voter an
opportunity to exercise their vote and to turn out where they
may not turn out on polling day.
Q244 Mr Walker: I am interested,
why is turnout going down around the Western world, do you think?
Mr Gould: There are many, many
theories but one of the discouraging factors is that the youth
are not turning out. Older people are turning out to vote but
the youth, for whatever reason, despite the techniques that have
been tried the youth vote and younger people are something that
is a real problem and causing the difficulty to a great extent.
By the way, there is a proposal in the US to lower the vote to
16 to try to get the youth vote.
Q245 Mr Walker: That is being floated
here, but if they are not turning out at 18 why on earth they
would turn out at 16 is slightly optimistic. Very quickly on the
youth vote—you are experts in this area—why do you
feel that young people do not want to invest in their democracy,
the democratic process?
Mr Gould: Michael is younger than
I am so maybe he could answer,
Mr Boda: I do not think I can
answer that properly and I am not sure that anyone can, but why
are they disillusioned with politics is a good question. What
I would look at is often the question arises as to what institutions
are responsible for raising the turnout rate, and around the world
you had been seeing a trend to say it is the Electoral Commission
that is responsible for raising turnout, but actually when you
look at it you need to focus much more on the parties and their
ability to get the vote out. There is a whole literature on this
and there is no consensus as to how you get the vote.
Q246 Mr Walker: Just a final point,
do you think the war of big ideas has been won, the struggle between
the Left and the Right, and as the political parties coalesce
around the centre ground there is just less interest, there are
less big things at stake to drive people to the polls?
Mr Gould: I guess one of the fundamental
questions is should we continue to approach these elections and
democracy in terms of the voluntary turnout of electors, or should
we follow the pattern in Australia and other countries where registration
and turnout is mandatory, and they have very high turnouts. That
then raises the question of quality versus quantity, will people
really take the time to learn and understand what the issues are
if they are forced to come out.
Mr Boda: We did talk about this
in the context of the local government elections in Scotland and
in talking about decoupling the elections we felt that it was
important the figure for turnout was not necessarily the issue,
although it is important, but it is the engagement of citizens,
and that was the argument that we put forward for decoupling the
elections, because it was our view in discussion with all the
stakeholders that that would be one way that you could allow the
citizen to be engaged in local government elections.
Q247 Mr Walker: This is a semi-serious
question; if we had compulsory voting in this country would I
be allowed to establish a party called "None of the above"
because that would actually in many cases give me a fairly good
chance of securing quite a few members of Parliament probably
across the country?
Mr Gould: I will not answer your
question directly but I was with Elections Canada for 20 years
and for 20 years we tried to convince the government to have a
line "none of the above" because we knew that some people
were spoiling their ballots because it was none of the above and
we could not tell which was which and we could not really advise
on the disaffected electorate.
Q248 Chairman: Do you not worry then
that none of the above wins?
Mr Gould: It is a possibility
but, as I say, we could never convince the government on that
story.
Q249 Mr Davidson: The "none
of the above" concept is quite a humorous one and so on,
but you can see how it can quite easily be open to manipulation
by press barons and the like. Can I ask you another question,
which is that you do recommend that the returning officer position
should be what you call professionalised, but I worry a bit about
this on the basis that almost every profession or would-be profession
argues that it ought to be made as it were more exclusive, they
ought to get more money, they need more qualifications so that
it becomes a special language that keeps everybody else out. Is
there not a danger of that occurring if we go down your road?
Mr Gould: As we see it the present
situation involves at least the legislative definition of a number
of different returning officers, regional, local and so on, plus
a registration officer, and what happened in the last election
of course is that the functions were combined by agreement and
so where we were going in the report was to say why not recognise
the status quo and combine the different functions of the different
returning officers into one and also take the position perhaps
of the registration officer and amalgamate that, because you are
paying for that anyway and that will not increase your costs significantly
if you have one function that does everything. Secondly, the chief
executive of the council is very often the returning officer when
an election comes round. The chief executive has a job to do and
sometimes they take over and do it, sometimes they delegate it,
but their focus is as chief executive officer, not as returning
officer, other than as a part-time thing. So our feeling is that
in terms of providing the kinds of service and the kinds of response
to parties, to participants in the election, it would be much
better to have a professionalised returning officer and to apply
the same criteria because the reality is that the quality of returning
officers across Scotland varies from superb to perhaps adequate.
To try to bring some consistency and quality to the whole profession,
we think that this would be useful and we would examine it.
Q250 Mr Davidson: Taking on board
the point that some of the returning officers are barely adequate,
that is a reflection upon the quality of chief executives in local
authorities, which is an interesting point, is it not? I understand
your point about combining it with the registration officers and
I can see that making the role of returning officer something
that runs on throughout the year and they then have a responsibility
for registration, but do you draw a distinction between that and
this concept of professionalisation though, because my anxiety
is that it just becomes a narrow function, only a few people can
enter. Is there a distinction there or are you essentially saying
that you think the returning officer should also be the registration
officer and he proceeds to carry out these functions throughout
the year?
Mr Gould: What I am proposing
there is that all of the functions dealing with elections be concentrated
in one official, whether it has to do with voter registration,
whether it has to do with voter management and all of the functions
in combination.
Q251 Ms Clark: We have already discussed
in some detail the issues around overnight counting and you probably
understand that moving away from overnight counting would be quite
a major cultural shift in Britain. Have you considered what else
should be done to ease the burden on returning officers and in
particular the staff, which is one of the concerns that you have
with overnight counting. Have you considered what else could be
done that might at least go some way to addressing your concerns?
Mr Gould: There is one which we
mentioned in here which has other ramifications, but the polls
close at ten o'clock here; in most countries they will close at
seven or eight o'clock at night. Granted, there are concerns,
there are rationales, for closing the polls at ten but if you
give yourselves another two hours it really facilitates the overnight
count in a number of ways, giving you not only more time but less
fatigue and what have you. Then the question is what do you do
with the people who normally come in the last two hours? I always
hate to use Canada because Canada is not that great in terms of
all aspects of elections, but in this one what we have done is
that the legislation requires employers to give all employees
a minimum of three clear hours before the close, during the polling
hours, so if the polls open at seven and they start work at nine,
they can have until ten o'clock, if the polls close at seven they
would have to get off at four if they normally get off at five,
so it is not three hours that they get off, it is just so that
they have three hours to vote. That is an archaic provision from
when they had to move by horse and buggy and what have you and
that window could probably be closed to at least two hours, but
there are other avenues that can be explored and of course the
objective of the report is to open up that exploration, if the
will is there.
Q252 Mr Walker: I am not sure if
you are advocating closing the polls earlier, but I certainly
know that in my constituency the turnout would be far lower if
we got rid of that eight to ten slot, and giving people two or
three clear hours, to some degree they already get that and if
we were to shorten the working day you would probably find most
people would take it as an unofficial bank holiday and be piling
into the pubs in the city. I really would be very reticent to
shorten the day from ten at night to, say, seven or eight, but
I do think one of the great theatres of democracy is the overnight
count, it does involve people, it does create some excitement
and the e-counting just regiments it into a very boring, mundane,
sterile process. Is that really what we want to do to democracy
in this country because personally I think it is something that
should be celebrated and lauded and not sterilised.
Mr Gould: If I can respond, Chairman,
your conclusion about lower turnout if the poll was brought back
to seven o'clock may or may not be valid, and then there is the
question if advance polling was available would that offset it,
and this is where we are saying all of this stuff should be studied.
If you are looking at reducing the hours or moving the hours back,
there is time to carry out research to see whether it really is
valid to do this or whether it would have a negative impact, that
kind of thing.
Mr Walker: It staggers me, it really
does stagger me—maybe I am just an old fuddy-duddy—and
I do not know the reasons why people cannot get off their backsides
and walk no more than ten minutes, fit adults—admittedly
there are people who are disabled or whatever—but fit adults
who cannot be fagged basically to walk to a polling station and
cast their vote. I personally think that we are indulging these
people, perhaps, with this early opening, with these postal votes,
with this proxy voting. Look, democracy is something to be treasured
and if you do not want to take part in it, that is fine, but actually
we are not just going to amend the whole thing to suit you.
Q253 Chairman: Mr Gould, while we
all want to see more turnout I think it would be detrimental and
turnout would be less if we reduced the number of hours. I have
experienced that between eight and ten there is a good turnout
at the polling station. It is not the case that there is hardly
anybody turns out at those times, but at the same time, regardless
of the tradition and culture in the United Kingdom, to wait for
the elections and the votes to be counted the same night—people
stay awake until two or three o'clock in the morning and then
go to sleep; the excitement I think will disappear. If the elections
are decoupled in Scotland, the local government elections and
the Scottish Parliament elections, do you still think there is
a need for the counting to be done the next day?
Mr Gould: If the polls close at
ten and depending on the system and so on, the answer could be
yes or no. According to the media, their frustration is that people
go to sleep and do not even follow what is going on when the count
runs to after midnight so they lose their audience and where they
gain it is the next day—some of the media say that. Obviously,
this is an argument that cannot be won either way, it is one that
needs to be examined in terms of the interests of the candidates,
the parties, the voters and those who have to administer the elections,
and there is lots of time to do this.
Q254 Mr MacNeil: Mr Gould, this is
the first I have heard of your report and your recommendations,
but earlier you mentioned the buck stopping and the lack of accountability,
but you have said that the Scottish Government would be the logical
institution for looking after the Scottish elections. Is that
still your view and, firstly, why was it your view that the Scottish
Government is the most logical?
Mr Gould: This was just raised
in the context of a chief returning officer. The concept here
was that if there is going to be accountability there needs to
be a point of focus, not 32 points of focus in terms of the overall
management of the election, with similar and consistent standards
and coordination and so on. The recommendation that the jurisdictional
responsibility for that management of the election be located
in Scotland was because if you look at the process and divide
it in two parts, you cannot really effectively manage the Scottish
elections from Wales or from London or from wherever, it has to
be managed from Scotland, so it is a management process here.
Where you are looking at the legislative process the legislative
process is a matter of jurisdictional negotiation and if the legislation
remains in Westminster for the parliamentary elections that is
fine, but the guidance and the tools and the direction will go
to the chief returning officer to manage the election using that
legislation, so we were not talking about the legislative responsibility,
that is a matter for political negotiation. What we were focusing
on here was that the management of the process needs to be located
in Scotland.
Q255 Mr MacNeil: Would you say that
was one of the most important recommendations that you have for
the future, that that management be done in Scotland as opposed
to anywhere else?
Mr Gould: Yes.
Chairman: I am glad you asked that question,
Angus. Jim.
Q256 Mr Devine: You have suggested
decoupling the local government link with the Scottish Parliament;
I would actually disagree with that for a whole variety of reasons
such as territory, time awareness of the elections coming up.
Hopefully we have learned the lessons of the problems with the
two different systems because eventually what we could be talking
about is one year local government elections, the next year the
Scottish Parliament, the next year MP elections, the next year
a European election, so we could be into the realm of literally
every year having elections. Do you think that is a good idea?
Mr Gould: The timing obviously
is anybody's guess and has to be negotiated around what is already
fixed in law because the timings for some of these elections are
already fixed. What you have just described I think gives a strong
argument for a fulltime professionalised returning officer because
they are going to be moving from A to B to C to D, so they then
can transfer those skills, knowledge and experience from one election
to the other and their contacts, discussions and meetings with
the political parties and candidates and know the areas that they
are responsible for much better than doing this on a part-time
ad hoc basis.
Q257 Chairman: I am not opposed to
decoupling of the Scottish parliamentary and local government
elections but there were local government and Scottish Parliament
elections in 1999 and there were elections in 2003; they were
quite successful and there was no problem of vast numbers of spoilt
ballot papers. The reason for this is the combined ballot paper
and the probable change in the system of electing councillors,
so my fear is that some people might think that decoupling of
the election is the answer to all the questions. It is very important
that people know that there needs to be some awareness campaign
and we need to do no more than just decoupling the election.
Mr Gould: Let me clarify something
here because we did not recommend decoupling the elections because
of the problems because those elections do not have to be decoupled,
they can be managed without all of these problems. The reason
that I suggested the elections be decoupled was to give recognition
to local candidates and local issues because they just get buried
on a parliamentary election, they just disappear as far as the
elector is concerned, from my experience.
Q258 Mr Wallace: Following on from
that there are two things. One is that in the past where we had
a cross for one election and a cross for the other, you could
have had three elections on the same day—indeed, in 1999
we had the MEPs on the same day. But if we want STV and complicated
PR systems and all sorts of things, and a vote overnight result,
something has to give—you know, a result within a few hours—and
that is either the decoupling or the systems you select, because
it seems to me that the difference between 2003 and 2007 was along
came this ridiculous STV system—which I think is a ridiculous
system anyway—and combined ballot papers and everything
else, and at the same everyone wants, which I think is slightly
peculiar, this instant result that only weirdo anoraks and politicians—who
in the public's view are just above a rat and below a journalist
in the rankings—want. We are so in love with ourselves as
politicians we think the world is waiting for our result but,
frankly, I do not think they are. We like it because we have pounded
the streets for six weeks and it is a nice way to finish, but
actually I do not think the public really lose any sleep over
it—they think we are all the same half the time anyway.
Do you think it is the case that either we select more simplified
electoral systems in order to keep multiple votes on the same
day, or we say that something has got to give? Is that what you
think is the difference?
Mr Gould: From our review of the
rejected ballots the main problem that caused all of these rejected
ballots was very clearly the two ballots on the combined paper,
not 1,2,3 versus X, that was very minimal. That was very minimal
in a context where there was a new system introduced, limited
voter education but it was carried out and a voter encountering
all of this brand new approach—a combined ballot paper and
the 1,2,3 versus X—at one time. My expectation is that if
this was continued exactly as is and the two ballot papers were
not combined, there were two separate papers, and you had the
X and you had the 1,2,3 and you had decent instructions on the
ballots and lots of time for voter education, I do not think the
problem would really be significant at the next election.
Mr Walker: I am going to ask my honourable
friend from Lancaster & Wyre to step outside and take his
jacket off in a minute.
Mr Wallace: You take your anorak off.
Q259 Mr Walker: But before we step
outside, Mr Gould, you have travelled the world looking at elections
and monitoring elections and you have seen conspiracy and you
have seen cock-up—and I am sure this is just cock-up. On
a scale of one to ten, with ten being the biggest cock-up and
one just being sort of getting there, where would you say this
ranks in your many decades experience? It is a slightly loaded
question, but I am sure you are diplomatic enough to answer it.
Mr Gould: If I remove the contentious
political issues from this and I look at it strictly as an election
manager, my assessment of this is that it is not a major cock-up
in the sense that it is one that can easily be resolved—there
was not fraud, there was not manipulation, it was just one of
these things where there was too much done without sufficient
time, lack of coordination and fragmentation. It was basically
a managerial problem, if you look at the bottom line, and it is
fixable. In terms of the number of electors that lost their votes
because of invalid ballots, it was serious, because it was somewhere
around three times too high in terms of the average around the
world, but apart from that it is an election which will never
happen again like this, if I can put it that way. It was just
a blip in the normal election process in Scotland.
Chairman: The future structure of Scottish
elections, Jim Devine.
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