For several years, the idea of letting people vote in person ahead of polling day (e.g. at the Town Hall or in a local shopping centre) was tested out in a range of different British elections. Lots of time and money went on the tests, all of which came up with the same answer: it makes almost no difference to turnout, and the money that it takes up could have gone on other measures which would have been just as good, if not better, at raising turnout (e.g. general publicity campaigns reminding pepole to vote).
The pilots themselves went on long past the point at which they were revealing anything useful. Indeed, I’ve sat in quite a few meeting with civil servants of the years where I asked questions along the lines of, “What sort of result would this year’s pilots have to show for you to decide to drop the idea?”
Eventually, the idea of testing this was dropped and the idea of introducing early voting as a permanent feature of our elections quietly mothballed.
So far, so good – more pilots were run than necessary in my view, but the basic idea, “here’s an idea, let’s test it and then make a decision based on the evidence” was a good one.
Unfortunately, now enter stage left Labour MP Linda Riordan, who writes on Labour List:
The Government has introduced some welcome measures in this area. However, there is so much more that could be done.
… and then goes on to praise the idea of early voting, based on the US Presidential election.
Well, ok – but what about the evidence that we’ve gathered here in the UK? Doesn’t get a mention in her piece. She talks about the US, but ignores completely the UK trials and their outcome. And she also seems to have fallen for the myth that turnout soared in the US this time, which of course it didn’t.
But I do wonder why the Government, Electoral Commission, local councils and political parties spent lots of money, time and effort on tests of early voting, when none of that seems to matter at all to Linda Riordan?
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12 Comments
My impression is that early voting is used more in the US because queues at polling stations on election day can grow so much longer there. I’ve never seen huge queues in a British local or general election — is that typical or have by-elections and Oxfordshire polls been unusually quiet?
It may not increase overall turnout but there would be other good reasons to introduce it.
We should go for widespread early voting as an replacement for postal voting as it is much easier to ensure ballot integrity.
Richard – I agree – I’ve almost never seen a queue at a british polling station.
One reason for the US queues, I believe, is the sheer number of ballots each voter has to cast. They weren’t just voting on who should be president but, in many cases, a whole range of jobs down to who runs the local refuse service.
If casting your vote in the UK was a 30 minute exercise on flaky voting machines, I’m sure we’d have queues too and might be forced to introduce early voting.
Anonymous: except that postal voting is the one thing that *does* increase turnout.
Given that some people who vote by post would have great problems getting to a polling station at any time (due to illness or disability, for example) just going back to the old system on postal voting would probably be better than other forms of early voting if stopping the electoral abuses was your main objective.
The queuing point is an important one (driven in part by the number of votes being taken on the same day), and I think one of the reasons why early voting has been much more successful in the US than here.
Mark, are the results of any of the pilots online anywhere? Riordan’s running for re-election in my LPs other seat so solid data showing her wrong would be good.
Another reason I think for success in the US is that the polling districts are much larger and polling stations have to handle a lot more people? We have polling stations very close to where people live and they cover a relatively small number of electors each—some of the queues of people at the US stations would outnumber the total electors at a normal UK station IIRC.
Having said that, I’ve definitely seen queues, in 2001 I was telling in Exeter, the queue was massive; but then, it was a student area, the station was in the reception of the Hall of Residence and turnout was massive that year compared to normal student turnout. Very good humoured though.
Anon above was me
Mat – I did various bits of work on this when I was at ALDC. The biggest thing Riordan gets wrong is over the rise in turnout in the US. She also implies UK turnout continues to fall (05 was a rise and the recent by-elections suggest this is continuing) and talks of the positive aspects such as postal voting despite the criticisms.
Hywel, If you know a bit about it anyway, want to write me a brief article debunking her for the Halifax Lib Dem website? I can give you a nice graph on differential turnout and safe seats as well to tie in the electoral reform angle.
The Electoral Commission did a report into each and there should be a copy of them all on their website.
Early Voting isn’t the only subject of pointless pilots.
In Crewe & Nantwich several years ago we piloted internet voting in two polling districts (one leafy rural/ dormitory village; the other gritty urban). It went down quite well and SEEMS to have increased turnout a little. But, of course, a one-off proves nothing [the increase may simply be the result of novelty value and the extra publicity generated]. The acid test would be to continue the pilot, and see whether the effect was maintained.
But no, off they went on some other “big new idea” and so no worthwhile evidence was gathered.
Waste of time and money.
Well, Labour knows that the polls tend to move slightly to the Lib Dems during the last 2 weeks of a campaign (due to fair coverage laws), so maybe they want people to vote early – Labour – before they change their mind?
Talk of Internet-based voting from domestic PCs gives me the willies, speaking as a geek.
We’ve seen that electronic voting cannot be trusted with custom-built machines in special physical enclosures with several safeguards, so expecting Joe Public’s virus-ridden Windows box to provide an anonymous and secure vote is nigh-on impossible.
Hell, even electronic counting of hand-cast ballots can be problematic – see http://www.openrightsgroup.org/2008/07/02/org-verdict-on-london-elections-insufficient-evidence-to-declare-confidence-in-results/ for details.