Blink and you might have missed it: first details of a discussion about ways to cut the costs of running elections are leaked and then Jack Straw promptly disowns them and kills off the discussion.
Given how weak the proposals were – and the relatively small sums involved – I think that was the right decision by Straw and, although he and Liberal Democrats are usually not the best of friends, I think there’ll be widespread agreement in the Lib Dems with his comment, “Democracy has to be paid for”. Ideas such as replacing the general election freepost leaflets with one booklet would go quite against the current appetitie from the public to hear more from individual candidates about what the believe and what they want to do.
There are, though, three lessons to learn from the ideas that were floated.
Democracy is done on the cheap
First, democracy is run extremely cheaply in the UK. The full list of ideas includes highly controversial major cuts to the conduct of elections, yet none would be expected to save anywhere near £10m. Compared to the sums bandied about when Whitehall departments talk about major cuts in other areas of nationwide activity, those sums are small.
Second, those sums do not look that much bigger when compared instead with two other areas of major (possible) electoral expenditure – the costs of the CORE project (a good runner for any ‘worst Government IT project’ prize) or the Electoral Commission’s own running costs (annual budget: £24 million). Indeed, the question of looking closely at the EC’s expenditure levels and priorities is one on which I mostly agree with with David Cameron’s comments. There are some areas where I think the Electoral Commission should do more, but overall there is more than enough scope for sensible cutbacks to both cover those and save money overall.
Where Robin Cook got it wrong
Third, the lack of solid evidence on which to base any debate around proposals to cut the number of polling stations is an indictment of the government’s previous electoral pilots projects – and, indirectly, of Robin Cook.
It sounds reasonable, and there is good anecdotal evidence, that the more polling stations there are, the easier it is for people to vote and therefore the higher turnout will be.
However, other experiments with making it easier for people to vote fall into two camps. First, automatically supplying everyone with postal ballot papers at home (i.e. all-postal ballots) significantly raises turnout, even if at the cost of other problems. Second, every other innovation to make it easier for people to vote (such as early voting) doesn’t have much of an impact on turnout.
All-postal ballots are the only exception to the experience so far that making it easier for people to vote doesn’t do much to raise turnout. So it’s not exactly unreasonable to doubt how much of an impact increasing or decreasing the number of polling stations really would have.
Anecdotal evidences only takes you so far (and on the basis of what I’ve seen, I think the number of polling stations can have a significant impact on turnout – but I accept that the evidence so far is pretty thin). It shouldn’t be that difficult to put together rigorous statistical data on the question, given that the combination of marked registers, full postal addresses and locations of polling stations provides a wealth of geographical data that could be crunched.
But that’s not been done, and so we are operating in the dark. Arguments for saving money by cutting the number of polling stations should be based on that sort of rigorous data.
Similarly, though, we’ve been through a decade of so of experiments with ways of raising turnout with tens of millions of pounds spent – and again, we’ve not had data or experiments to show if increasing the number of polling stations would raise turnout significantly.
Why are we so much in the dark? That’s because an awful lot of the piloting and analysis has been around internet and SMS voting. Even though right from the start it was clear from the pilots that they did little to raise turnout, there were persisted with year after year, taking time and money that could have been spent on learning about other issues – such as the impact of varying the number of polling stations.
For that, Robin Cook was largely responsible for pulling out of thin air a government target that the next general election but one would be an “e-enabled” one – even though at the time of setting the target, the pilots were not showing any grounds for believing that this would be an effective way to raise turnout.
Hence after the expenditure of much time and money we still are operating far too much on the dark on questions of turnout – not just in the case of polling stations but also on basics such as systematic collection and analysis of turnout data (a job that would bring more benefits and at lower cost than some of the hugely expanded and detailed, but incomplete and so unenlightening, financial data the Electoral Commission now puts efforts into collecting).
6 Comments
There are two curious aspect s to this story. (1) Why the proposals were being floated inside the Ministry of Justice and not the Electoral Commission. (2) Whether this was really part of the idea that polling stations, “rickety wooden booths” and “stubby pencils” are all so terribly old fashioned and have no part in a “modern democracy”.
As for the EC, if it costs £24 millions I would save about £23 millions of that. The work used to be done by 3 people and a cat in the Home Office.
Tony Greaves
The real problem with turnout is that the political parties are failing to inspire the electorate, whilst muc of the electorate would prefer to ignore politics if they could.
I personally like the system we have had in the past. Voting at a polling station is a little inconvenient if you have a busy life, but at least by voting you have demonstarted that you care enough about politics to make that extra effort to vote.
It is imperfect. I is rediculously easy to vote in 2 places. Counting the ballot papers are also problematic.
I would favour a system where at a polling station you can choose to vote either by paper (particulary suitable if you do not like modern technology) or on a computer screen (advantage – instant counts, disadvantage – security and fraud concerns).
I do not favour internet or mobile phone voting. That puts a bias in the system in favour of those who have this technology.
Tony: the answer to (1) is that it is the MoJ who funds elections and decides on the level of payments etc. So I don’t see a problem with the MoJ floating the proposals, though they should have been involving the Electoral Commission, political parties and others rather more in it (at least as far as I know in terms of how the process was being handled).
Living in a mixed rural and urban area gives you a different perspective, perhaps. Polling Stations in our towns are often too big, covering up to 5,000 electors, leading to queues on even local election days, hardly conducive to improving turnout… Combine this with Polling Stations in our villages some of which have as few as 60 electors and you can see that there ought to be a better way of doing this…
Quite what, I’m not sure.
Getting people on the the electoral register is quite difficult, even before one considers the problem of persuading them to vote.
Retailers have experience of valuing something too cheaply and finding no one wants to buy it.
Perhaps we gone the same way with voting ? If we don’t value it a bit more, neither will the public.
I agree with Tony Greaves, 96% of the electoral commission should go.
I don’t think all the blame belongs to parties – much of the public is willfully ignorant about and disinterested in politics.
Before throwing the Electoral Commission baby out with the bathwater, we should remember carefully that much of the apparatus was brought in to combat sleaze. There we were, in the 90s attacking the Tories and their sleazy ways. And now whinging about the “bureaucracy” that comes in the wake of the clean-up operation. Well, I’ve got news ofor you guys – clean-ups don’t come without bureaucracy. Clearly, in some areas we are over the top – and some of the changes to donation declarations now are a step in the right direction.
But one crucial change of attitude is required, which is to acknowledge the fallibility of us, the politicians (it would also be good to acknowledge to the public that we ALL ARE politicians – we are even more hated when we try to hide our identity!) And, curiously, I think we in the Lib Dems are probably the most culpable of thinking that democratic action by politicians alone is capable of cleaning up any mess. We are fallible, and we need failsafe safety nets to ensure we are kept in line.
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[…] testing is another example of overall how poorly thought through the electoral pilots were – basic questions were left unanswered whilst other ideas were repeatedly retested long after it became clear they didn’t bring significant […]
[…] testing is another example of overall how poorly thought through the electoral pilots were – basic questions were left unanswered whilst other ideas were repeatedly retested long after it became clear they didn’t bring significant […]