Tag Archives: jenny watson

Electoral Commission imposes voting limits to avoid repeat of polling station queues

By Mark Pack | Published 30th March 2011 - 11:57 am

A limit on the maximum number of people eligible to vote at a polling station has been imposed by the Electoral Commission under the powers given to its Chief Executive, Jenny Watson, to run the AV referendum in May.

Under the law for referendums, Jenny Watson is the Chief Counting Officer and thereby able to issue instructions as to how the vote should be conducted around the country. Because the referendum is being held on the same day as other elections, many of those instructions in effect also apply to the other elections as well.

One of these is the instruction that …

Continue reading »
Posted in Election law | Also tagged , | 9 Comments

Electoral Commission’s verdict: electoral fraud is not a serious problem

By Mark Pack | Published 17th February 2011 - 8:55 am

The Electoral Commission has published the results of its third survey of reports of electoral fraud and other malpractice, this time covering the 2010 general and local elections and for the first time including data for every police force. Commenting on the findings, Electoral Commission Chair, Jenny Watson, said:

There was some high profile reporting of alleged electoral malpractice around the elections and perceptions of fraud continue to be a concern to voters. Yet these figures do not support the more pessimistic perceptions: there’s no evidence of widespread attempts to commit electoral fraud, or of election results being called into question.

…

Continue reading »
Posted in Election law, News | Also tagged , , | Leave a comment

Good news as Electoral Commission decides to preserve local donation records

By Mark Pack | Published 28th September 2010 - 12:27 pm

The Electoral Commission is plugging a gap in the record of political donations following a decision to change its policy on retaining copies of constituency candidate expense returns.

Donations made direct to a candidate (rather than to their party) are only recorded in these constituency returns and do not appear in the donation records published by the Electoral Commission. However, in previous Parliaments both the local copies of these returns kept by electoral officials and the copies gathered in by the Electoral Commission were destroyed after a handful of years. This meant that even before the next general election was held, …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged , | 1 Comment

Labour to oppose voting reform legislation

By Helen Duffett | Published 28th July 2010 - 7:50 am

The Labour shadow cabinet has decided to vote against the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, insisting that it should not be given a second reading.

From the Press Association,

Labour is to vote against legislation paving the way for a referendum on reforming the voting system.

The shadow cabinet decided to oppose the Government’s Bill because it also includes provisions for equalising the size of constituencies.

The move sets the stage for a major test of the coalition, with Labour MPs lining up alongside rebel Tories in a bid to derail the proposals.

The commitment to a referendum on switching to Alternative

…

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged , , , | 27 Comments

Weekend voting gets another push from Jenny Watson

By Mark Pack | Published 15th March 2010 - 9:54 pm

In an interview with The Guardian newspaper, Electoral Commission chair Jenny Watson repeated the Commission’s interest in seeing a switch to weekend voting:

Flexible election schedules, including opening the polls for entire weekends, should be considered to make the system more relevant to 21st century life, she said.

These comments echo strong public support for weekend voting, support from a Liberal Democrat front bencher, Lord (Chris) Rennard, and previous Electoral Commission statements.

In the interview, Jenny Watson also gave her support to the much more controversial issue of looking again at online voting, expressed doubts about how many general …

Continue reading »
Posted in Election law | Also tagged , , | 1 Comment

Labour Party under fire for breaking Code of Conduct on postal voting

By Mark Pack | Published 23rd February 2010 - 11:32 pm

The Electoral Commission’s report into the November 2009 Parliamentary by-election in Glasgow North East has condemned the Labour Party for breaking the Code of Conduct on postal voting, saying the party repeatedly failed to process postal vote forms promptly.

The Code allows parties to distribute to the public forms for signing up to postal votes and to have them returned to a party address. This makes sense in circumstances such as the forms being in with a mailing which also asks for donations to the campaign where giving two different return addresses could result in items going to the wrong place …

Continue reading »
Posted in Election law, Parliamentary by-elections | Also tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Jenny Watson responds to criticism of her speech

By Mark Pack | Published 1st July 2009 - 10:25 pm

On Tuesday evening I blogged about the speech given by Jenny Watson, Chair of the Electoral Commission, criticising her comments about turnout in British elections:

I was rather surprised at the introduction to your speech earlier today to the UCL Constitution Unit where you painted what seems to me a very misleading picture of what is happening to turnout in British elections.

I appreciate that is a fairly strong criticism, so I hope you won’t mind me justifying it by taking parts of your speech and commenting on them in detail.

You can read my detailed comments in the original …

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged , | 6 Comments

The Electoral Commission gets it wrong on turnout

By Mark Pack | Published 30th June 2009 - 11:08 pm

Here’s the email I’ve sent to Jenny Watson, Chair of the Electoral Commission:

Dear Jenny Watson,

I was rather surprised at the introduction to your speech earlier today to the UCL Constitution Unit where you painted what seems to me a very misleading picture of what is happening to turnout in British elections.

I appreciate that is a fairly strong criticism, so I hope you won’t mind me justifying it by taking parts of your speech and commenting on them in detail.

After talking about recent political scandals, you said:

One of the immediate measures of the impact of these events is turnout at the recent elections. Turnout for the European elections across the UK was just 34 per cent, against a European average of 43 per cent.

However, turnout in the UK has been lower than the European average in every European election since and including the first one in 1979. The mere fact of it being lower again does not tell us about the “impact of these events”.

The one piece of evidence you present on that is wrong, for you say:

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Also tagged , | 12 Comments