Democracy has been saved “at the eleventh hour” – that’s right, the cross-party “Save general election night” campaign has successfully lobbied the government to stop councils from delaying counting votes until a day after the election.
It seems many Liberal Democrats are welcoming the right outcome for the wrong reason.
There are two main possible justifications for this:
(1) Counting the votes as soon as possible, to minimise the risk of someone tampering with ballot boxes.
(2) Feeding the frenzy of wanting instant results broadcast as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately, the campaign has been geared towards the latter, and most Lib Dem MPs who’ve supported the campaign have emphasised this reason. Ed Davey argues “It’s important for democracy that you retain the excitement of election night and brings the process of voting to a climax” while Don Foster says “The excitement of watching the results unfold through the night is one of the things that stimulates interest…dragging the results out across two days like this will only dilute interest.”
Even more unfortunately, this rationale doesn’t stand up for Liberal Democrats. Anybody who supports STV – as our party does – also supports counting in such large constituencies that voting results would not be completed for several days.
There is a trade-off between speed and accuracy, and I’d rather live in a country that makes all votes count, and carefully counts all the votes – however long it takes – than one which subverts democracy to the hype of TV election coverage. Therein lies the road to Florida 2000; with elections being ‘called’ by forecast, and candidates conceding defeat when only a fraction of votes have been counted. As such, this is an issue which separates those who are primarily democrats from those who are primarily political anoraks.
So by all means, let’s push for counting to BEGIN straight after polls close, as a safeguard against fraud. But let’s not get drawn in to an ill-thought-out campaign that creates false expectations which are hostile to electoral reform.
Seth Thévoz is doing a PhD in nineteenth-century parliamentary history with Warwick University and the History of Parliament Trust. He writes here in a personal capacity.
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19 Comments
So yet another example of Gordon Brown willing the end without being prepared to put up the money to make it happen. And spot on about STV – I’ve often heard it used as an argument against STV that you don’t know the result for days afterwards in Eire: is there less interest or involvement in politics there as a result?
Absolutely right. The political class must look like self-absorbed arseholes to the outside world over this.
There is nothing about STV that inherently makes it take a long time. STV is actually a family of voting systems with subtle variations in accuracy and the method of counting. The Irish elections use a particularly inefficient variation (for no immediately apparent reason; so far as I can tell, they just don’t care how long it takes). We don’t have to copy them in this. There’s also a lot of time wasted due to the people doing the counting not making an effort to be fast.
In fact, if we are willing to accept a computerised count (not “electronic voting”, just computer processing of hand tallies) then it would be straightforward to process a full STV general election in one evening, assuming there were no recounts required. It is perfectly possible to do this in a way that was both fair and seen to be fair – the production of the vote tallies can be overseen in the usual way, and the full tallies supplied to all parties for them to check the results with their own equipment. It wouldn’t even cost very much.
Actually, when it comes to surpluses, the Irish system is one of the quickest options available – and one of the least accurate.
Nonetheless, if we did introduce STV we almost certainly would have to go down the electronic counting option. This would be fine so long as the system had a proper audit trail.
Personally, one of those checks should be for all candidates to be given a DVD including a scan of every single ballot paper at the end of the count. That way they would be able to verify the results themselves, using their own systems.
Andrew – I can accept that it is possible to process the votes for a multi-member constituency ‘in an evening’. Unfortunately this option isn’t available unless you leave counting to th following evening, as voting doesn’t end until 10pm at night.
I generally agree with the post here. The main argument that has been put for counting through the night is that it is more exciting. In my view this is not a good enough reason to outweight the many practical reasons which have led a minority of Returning Officers to decide to count during the day on the Friday. Personally i think it is perfectly reasonable for any Returning Officer to decide that, having been up since probably 5am on polling day and working through to 11pm, he or she might be entitled to a few hours sleep before running an election count.
I am particularly concerned that a majority of Members of Parliament seem to believe they should overturn the professional judgement of local Returning Officers, wihtout presumably knowing much about the local factors involved in different areas.
I am not actually convinced that it is actually any more ‘exciting’ to saty up until five or six in the morning to see the results. Every election in living memory has had a mixture of Thursday night and Friday daytime counts, and it doesn’t seem to have done anyone any harm.
Whatever happens we will probably have a good idea about the result during the early hours of the Friday morning.
“Every election in living memory has had a mixture of Thursday night and Friday daytime counts, and it doesn’t seem to have done anyone any harm.”
In 1992 the Tories didn’t actually get their majority till the middle of the following morning and everyone seemed to cope OK.
There is a lot of talk about the opportunity to tamper with ballot boxes by leaving them over night. That may be true but there are numerous opportunities to tamper with the votes at many other stages which people don’t seem as bothered about. In any case that could be remedied by collecting the ballot boxes in a central location and giving agents the opportunity to attend and affix their own seals.
This is garbage and dangerous garbage, There will be the largest ever number of late postal votes and they should all be properly verified (the two personal identifiers of singature and DOB checked against the ERO’s records). The idea that people should be counting votes at 3am and later (when some of them have been on duty since before 7am) is nonsense.
Also the risk of tampering does not stand up. The best way to avoid tampering is for ballot boxes to remain sealed until they are properly counted. There are going to be a lot of dual elections on May 6th and the Council ballot papers will be opened on the night, verified, then stored away again until the next day. This is more fraught with dangers than storing the original sealed boxe all together overnight.
It is a silly populist move when in practice few people stay up very late other than politicos (and the main lot of politicos will be at counts anyway). It’s all part and parcel of the idea of turning politics into entertainment for the masses and should be firmly resisted.
What is more it seems they want to force all seats to county overnight even those that traditionally count the next day.
I am sorry that some of our MPs are joining in this dangerous nonsense.
Tony Greaves
I’m pleased that election night has been saved. We live in age of instant news so delaying the result wouldn’t be right.
Even in 1964, 430 results were declared on the night. We should be able to match that nearly 50 years later.
Returning officers will respond to this by starting trhe count within 4 hours. Doing some token work, going to bed and finishing the job properly the next morning.
What is really to be gained by having results declared at 6am on a Friday morning rather than lunchtime following a decent night’s rest?
Neil: in theory your point about how MPs should leave it to the professionals to judge is a good one, but in this case it’s one I’d not go along with because, having read the views of Returning Officers which were collated by the AEA, I’ve found so many of their arguments to be very poor. In particular, there are a range of ways open to ROs under the law to tackle the workload involved in checking postal votes, but many of them seem to have gone straight from “it’ll be harder than in the past” to “we must delay” without fully considering the options available. So I think this is one case where some of the professionals have let their colleagues down and it is reasonable for MPs to take a different view.
“It is a silly populist move when in practice few people stay up very late other than politicos (and the main lot of politicos will be at counts anyway).” Lord Greaves.
On Election Night in 2005, an average of 4.3 million were watching BBC election coverage at any given time between 9.55 and 2.00 in the morning. The ratings peaked at 10.45 at 6 million, and 14.9 million viewers watched some part of the coverage.
A lot of people who aren’t dedicated politicos are obviously interested enough to watch the results come in. While this may not be altogether relevant (I think it is, as it happens), it can’t be pretended that it’s of little interest to the public at large.
Foregone Conclusion – There’s no reason to race through the counting, just to declare a result on the night.
Why not have a proper timetable for voting and counting? – For example – Voting takes place on Saturday AND Sunday, and results are counted and checked over on Monday and Tuesday, with results declared on the Wednesday ?
You could still have results night coverage, just a couple of nights after voting takes place.
If we ever change to STV, then a delay would be necessary anyway.
Mark – there may well have been some weak points put by ROs in favour of counting during the day on the Friday. But there have been equally weak points put for counting them in the early hours of the Friday too, including by many MPs. Anyway isn’t ‘it will be harder in the past, so we must delay’ a perfectly reasonable point, if there is no compelling reason to stay even further into the early hours?
Foregone Conclusion. Doesn’t the fact that ratings peaked at 10.45pm tell you something? It suggests to me that people steadily went to bed from then on. What evidence is there that just as many people, if not more, won’t watch during the day on Friday?
Neil – I agree – there is no reason to think that people would be any interested in the result, just because it delivered on the same night as the voting.
Would the same people who stayed up to watch the results have lost interest b the following day?
Hurried Election night counting is a pointless ‘tradition’ and serves no purpose other than to provide entertainment.
This really is pathetic nonsense. I’m sure Warren. George, Bill, Richard, Alan and the rest can carry on running the country as usual without us. Let’s get a good nights sleep!
Mike: the point about public interest in the election results is more about the media coverage. When the results are coming in overnight, there is little other competition for news space on the TV channels, with the result that the elections get heavy coverage – and many people watch the results (see figures quoted in an earlier comment). However, if the results are coming in primarily through the day on Friday, will TV channels really clear as much space for them? We’ve already seen how overnight by-election results get more coverage than those declared during the day on Friday.
We could easily speed up the system by replacing manual ballots with computer printed ones the voter could inspect before insertion. These could be counted by computer scanning systems which would work more effectively than the previous experiment with them because all ballots would be similarly marked and presented. Checking would then be a matter of scrutinizing the operation of the scanner and insuring it didn’t miscount and wasn’t tampered with.
Advantages
(a) Faster
(b) Removes the possibility of voters losing their vote through error e.g. placing an ‘x’ when they are required to place a ‘1’.
(c) It removes much of the force of the ‘it’s too complicated’ objection to various forms of PR as the machine could explain to the voter the manner in which they are to vote by eliminating possible sources of error ‘e.g. Pick your first choice candidate. Now pick your second choice….’
Disadvantages
(a) You would no longer be able to voluntarily spoil your ballot by writing abuse on it. Small price to pay, I think.
(b) Various luddites and paranoid persons I’m sure will have issues with the use of computers. I only point out (1) this country is not the United States, (2) we can have plenty of scrutiny and transparency of the machines in place (indeed; more than the relatively opaque system the states uses), (3) manual /inspection/ of ballots is surely as reliable a system as manual writing of ballots, (4) It could be done as an optional system, albeit with it’s ability to deliver on the above advantages somewhat compromised as a result.
Where can I find out the Lib-Dems preferred voting method ie FPP/STV/PR/etc
I wold rather results came out correctly than hurriedly. There’s a lot of grandstanding by MPs over this and not
enough attention paid to the people who have to do the counting.