During the week Peter Wardle, the Electoral Commission’s Chief Executive, gave a speech to local government chief executives about how elections are run in this country. He both had nice things to say about political parties and threw a few barbed comments in the direction of the Government.
First, the niceness:
We’re very conscious indeed that without effective political parties and candidates, politics can’t get off first base.
We’re very conscious that the vast majority of those who get involved with election campaigns are volunteers – they do it because they care, and they do it on top of all their other commitments.
And we’re very conscious that not everyone who gets involved in politics does so through a political party – 10 per cent of the councillors elected in England and Wales are independents.
It’s worth pausing to consider what candidates and parties expect from us at election time.
They expect and deserve clear, timely and easily accessible information about how to take part, and the rules they need to follow. There are plenty of good examples of this around, especially where Returning Officers make sure that likely candidates have the chance to get briefed well in advance of elections.
And they expect and deserve a transparent process, open to scrutiny. In practice, that means consistent application of the rules, with a clear mechanism for sorting out any problems; and accurate results.
The reference to “plenty of good examples around” highlights that there is work that many councils can do to improve the way elections are run. The speech went through at some length some of the measures being taken, such as the introduction of performance standards.
And then there were the barbed comments about the Government’s enthusiasm for electoral pilots but unwilllingness to move on individual registration:
A strategy for modernising our electoral system needs to go well beyond continuing with a fairly random pattern of voluntary and small-scale e-voting pilots. We first need to take a step back and resolve some fundamental questions about the system itself.
And that should start with registration.
Registering by household was introduced in a different era. And it belongs in a different era. It’s not right in the 21st century for our democratic process to be founded on a system where someone called ‘head of the household’ can influence who else gets the vote…
The Electoral Commission’s been calling for this change for more than 5 years – since 2003. We’re not alone – we’ve been joined by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe; the Committee on Standards in Public Life; the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust; and the judge who heard the petitions in Birmingham and Slough. All of them support a change to individual registration. And the most recent survey of public attitudes by the Committee on Standards in Public Life found that nearly two-thirds of the people they spoke to seem to favour a move to individual registration.
The front benches of the main political parties at Westminster all now support it. The Government says it supports individual registration in principle, but has so far opposed attempts to legislate for the change.
That may seem a fairly mild comment to those used to robust political debate, but in context it’s a frank criticism of the Government – ‘you claim you’re in favour of this, loads of other people are in favour of this, so why do you mess around with other things instead of getting on with it?’ Which is a very good question.
The full text of the speech is available as a pdf here.
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2 Comments
I regularly act as Agent across 5 District Councils and six Constituencies in Cambridgeshire. An experience that ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous. Despite the structures and procedures put in place by the Electoral Commission, the level of support from Electoral Services Staff can at best be said to be ‘variable’. I tire of correcting staff and often returning officers for their failures to follow procedures. It involves being tirelessly polite and amiable, frankly, not my best qualities, and often knowing that you will get little co-operation in return.
Let’s start with electoral registration. One authority takes this very seriously, has temporary staff taken on each year who are provided with lists of houses not on the register and paid to visit them and sign them up. The net result is that this District, let’s call it Huntingdonshire, has in my estimation at least 98% or eligible residents on the register. Another authority is truly awful and again, in my estimation, is well below 90%.
The other authorities are at various levels in between.
Procedurally, the inconsistencies are just as ridiculous. One authority, once again, let’s call it Huntingdonshire, sends regular register updates by PDF, as it does postal voter lists and any other data requested. Paper copies of Registers are automatically provided and access to marked registers is correctly and professionally administered. Other Councils are more like a lottery, though one has improved no end recently.
In other words this is just more work than I need. The Electoral Commission MUST ensure that standards are improved and rules CONSISTENTLY applied. During elections I should not have to remember which authority will automatically email me a PDF of candidates nominated for each election, that another will only put it on their website; another send it in the post and another have to be ‘beaten up’ on the phone to get them to do anything at all.
The rules for elections are difficult enough nowadays, without this aggravation. I hope the remarks of the EC’s Chief Executive will result in improvements.
Absolutely right Martin. We can all recount horror stories that we’ve been involved with. Mine include (1) ballot papers being verified face down at a local council by election count and the “argument” we then had with an allegedly experienced council Chief Exec. who believed that what was being done was correct and (2) a councils that don’t automatically issue copies of the electoral roll with packs of nomination papers. The reasons I’ve had for this practice include “well, you don’t have a candidate yet” and “you get the signatures then we’ll check to see if they’re on the roll”. However, by far the worst practice in my opinion is the non publicising of local by elections. Most councils believe that putting a piece of paper on a notice board is sufficient, some will put stuff on their website, some will even put that information in a place on their website that’s easy to find. Its anti democratic and biased in favour of the status quo. Councils should be required to keep a register of all political party DNOs for their area that they have previously been made aware of and notify them all when a councillor vacancy is advertised. To ensure independents are notified they should also include on this register all others of no party who have previously shown an interest in standing for election in their area.