National Assembly for Wales

Local Government and Public Services Committee

Electoral Arrangements in Wales - A Discussion Document

Responce form Roger Morris- Electoral Practitioner 
13^th July 2006 Dear Ann, Electoral Arrangements in Wales Thank you for your letter of 2^nd June, and the opportunity again to try to contribute to the work of your Committee. I have given my responses to those questions where I feel I have knowledge to offer, and would of course be pleased to amplify this letter further in any way that might be helpful.Question 1. Personally I never sought anyone’s prosecution for failure to register during my 23 years as a registration officer, and nor did my two employing authorities (Durham City and Northampton) encourage me to do so. I have three points on this question. First, multiple prosecutions would involve very significant resource costs for very little tangible benefit to the authority, and any fines would in all probability be low. Secondly, it is questionable whether the application for the basic democratic right to vote — which you may argue is too little valued in a country like ours — should become publicly associated with criminal penalties. If there is no obligation actually to vote, what difference does failure to register make? Prosecution (or any other penalty) will probably be counter-productive, as someone fined for wilful failure to register is unlikely to be a regular or willing voter. Moreover, the use of false names will surely increase. A "complete" but only partly used register is hardly an end in itself. Is this, however, a decision for a local government official, or for an individual authority, to make? Should not the local position in general in Durham, Northampton or elsewhere reflect the general attitude and expectation across the U.K. as a whole? Thirdly, there is a considerable risk at the present time that a prosecution for failure to register could be turned into a campaigning or bureaucracy martyrdom platform, just as court action about failure to pay council tax sometimes becomes an opportunity to publicise the supposed failings of the tax gatherer. The implications of the Robertson case in 2001 in Wakefield where an individual successfully argued that his name should not be published continue still: one can all too easily envisage arguments, for instance, about whether a requirement just to register infringed human rights. Accordingly I see little point in seeking to enforce the present requirement in the present context: it could only be done against a different national background.Question 2. A simple but fairly effective way might be to require people to state their electoral number on a wide range of public documents and applications. Of course, the information would need at least random checking, and could well offend data protection and other principles were it seen to be being collected for ulterior purposes not necessary for the business in hand. It would no doubt help if local government in particular could achieve the ideal of ensuring that one change of address notification was sufficient across the whole range of the relevant council’s local services. As long as the system is seen as effectively (though not of course literally) voluntary it will remain no stronger than the available powers of persuasion. Question 3.Parliament has now passed the Electoral Administration Act 2006 and in that sense predicated the answers to this question. Initially at least I do not see why the advent of any form of personal identifier should have an improving effect on registration: those who already register will be likely to continue to do so, while those who are deterred by perceived greater complexity or by the feeling that registering somehow makes them more easily trackable by authority will not do so. On the other hand the requirement for any form of personal identification before someone can vote is likely to increase security to some degree. Question 3, however, takes registering and voting issues together, when they need to be considered separately, as very different considerations apply.Question 4.Paragraph 1.10 of the Discussion Document refers to the avoidance of "very political" questions. Question 4 is, however, inevitably political to some degree. Automatic registration presupposes the existence of linked systems not currently operating in the U.K. In other countries, where the tradition — and hence the many years of Governmental evolution —have been different it clearly works well. At a time, however, when major difficulties are being signalled with identity cards and other large-scale linked IT systems, it is difficult to see how automatic registration could be quickly and relatively inexpensively introduced. The sources of information would need to be most or all of those available to authorities now, but without the data protection and data matching problems and barriers which currently exist.A different approach is to ask why have registration at all? With automatic entitlement, why not use the reality that people nowadays often have to produce a variety of documents anyway, to prove who they are and where they live, to allow them to vote if they want to? There would of course be other problems, like foreign nationals and the inability to produce the traditional turnout percentages, but when identity cards are successfully introduced they will bring with them other alternatives for a population already largely IT-empowered for financial and other secure transactions.Question 5.This question presupposes the continuation, more or less, of the present system. It can only be answered at all as part of the wider context of citizen participation in all aspects of public and community affairs. Language may play a part, particularly amongst older people, and where it does the Welsh Assembly will be unusually well placed to relate to some of the experiences of people who for whatever reasons are not at ease expressing themselves in English. Culture may play a somewhat different part, and be more generally influential across all age groups. Nevertheless the act of registering (the question asks about registering, not voting) seems unlikely to appear of much purpose to someone who does not feel at least some identity and integration with their local community. The converse is perhaps that there is no need to take any special steps to encourage someone to register who already does identify with their community — and that indeed to do so might, in an apolitical context, itself be stigmatised as potentially discriminatory.Question 6.I have no doubt that an all-postal vote would be workable in Wales. (Footnote 5 of your Discussion Document refers to the evidence I gave to your LGPS Committee on 20^th April 2005 based on my experience of being Regional Returning Officer for the all-postal pilot in the East Midlands region for the June 2004 European Parliamentary elections.) The question whether it would be the best option overall at the present time is rather different. No system is without disadvantages of some kind; the pilots as operated in some regions in 2004 were not identical to all other all-postal voting trials in local elections, and — particularly now in the wake of the Electoral Administration Act 2006 — it is the detail that can make all the difference. A comparison of the operating rules for the different trials would be necessary, so that a more informed and specific recommendation could be made than just proposing all-postal voting in general.Arguments against moving to all-postal at the present time include the degree of loss of public confidence in postal voting during the last two or three years; that the reforms of the Electoral Administration Act 2006 need time to be assimilated anyway; that it would be unwise to change (and probably thereby give Wales a voting regime different from that of the rest of the U.K.) when electronic means at polling stations or elsewhere have yet to be thoroughly explored as an alternative, and one which avoids all the ballot papers being out of the returning officer’s control in the post with all the inherent risks that involves; and that it loses the traditional participative element and sense of event which going to the polling station involves. (It would be interesting to know the percentages who vote by post for company AGMs, National Trust elections and the like where large numbers are involved but there is relatively little need for the same security considerations.)Question 7.I do not think that either the systems or the public are yet quite ready to rely entirely on internet or text voting, though these undoubtedly appeal to younger voters and need further trialling. Electronic voting at polling stations (combined with alternatives for those who cannot attend) is already available and can be made as or more secure than traditional methods. It also saves on manual counting costs, and would probably involve less difficulty in educating voters about the change since the majority would still go to a polling station as at present. (It will be noted, however, that where all-postal voting has become the norm for voters, as in the North East in recent years, attitudes to the former system and its reliance on polling stations can quite quickly change.)Question 8. Yes, and obviously there have been a number of successful trials. This is largely a matter of practical convenience so long as the premises and voting conditions are compatible with that activity, and that voters are not liable to be influenced by commercial or other overtones. In rural Wales in particular, the availability of any convenient nearby premises mat continue to be a problem for some — a point Bryn Parry Jones made in a different context in paragraph 5.2 of the Discussion Document.Questions 9 and 10.I do not feel I have the specialist knowledge of Wales to contribute to these questions.Question 11.Learning about how your country is governed should be a part of the citizenship of everyone. Putting particular emphasis on party politics, as opposed to the existence of parties in the system, is analogous to teaching about particular religious denominations as part of the study of religion in general. As ever, inspirational teaching is likely to achieve more than routine delivery of a nationally decreed syllabus.Question 12. There is no reason to be nervous about this provided that the usual safeguards can be observed in terms of access to young people, balance (in terms of opportunity for parties to participate) and the avoidance of objectionable material.Question 13. I do not feel I have the specialist knowledge to contribute to this question.Question 14. Again, questions 14-16 involve issues of both registration and voting, which can be very different. When it is no longer just the "head of household" who fills in the registration form there will no doubt be many more people who find that requirement difficult or impossible without special provision or help. The forms should meet large print and other plain English/Welsh standards of course, and it would be good practice for registration officers to offer direct assistance to anyone who needs it. (Experience with the all-postal pilot voting in the East Midlands in 2004 suggests that far fewer people seek this than might be expected, although some allowance must be made for the facility becoming better known.)Question 15.I endorse the comments of Bryn Parry Jones in paragraph 5.2 of the Discussion Document. In my experience both returning officers and voters are well aware of situations where there are access or other problems, and assistance devices for blind or partially sighted voters are widely available. There is of course always more that can be done: a practical problem for many people who still want to go to vote in person even when this is difficult for them is that parking or gradient difficulties, or the distance into the polling station from the nearest point of vehicular access, often make voting physically demanding. This, however, in a climate when absent votes are freely available is also in part about the determination of voters, as well as returning officers, to overcome the challenges they face: it often applies where the actual polling station and immediate environs themselves meet accessibility standards. Question 16. I do not think detailed prescription is practical in this context, particularly in the case of polling stations. (Government in any case prescribes the canvass form for registration.) The approach of duty based on practicability used in the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 is well understood and precedented in legislation generally. It appears to be effective in relation to other kinds of premises.Question 17.I do not know whether the Netherlands and Denmark, referred to in paragraph 5.5 of the Discussion Document, also have widely available postal voting. The use of mobile ballot boxes (which could be quite expensive despite the limited use referred to under question 14 of a similar facility in the East Midlands in 2004) seems to have little purpose when postal voting is available. Were this not the case, the case for mobile ballot boxes, if supported by a medical or similar certificate, would be much stronger.Question 18. Producing similar reports, albeit informally, is already a practice in some areas, and is I understand part of the Electoral Commission’s consideration of performance standards for the purposes of section 67 of the Electoral Administration Act 2006. Such reports need to be kept as straightforward as possible, and limited to what is strictly necessary.Question 19. I do not feel I have the specialist knowledge to contribute to this question.Question 20. The increasing use of documents in other languages in recent years has been welcome and helpful. Local circumstances vary such this has to remain a matter of local awareness and good practice rather than any wider specific prescription. In the context of voting question 20 is repetitive of question 5.Question 21. No (though as the person quoted in paragraph 6.6 of the Discussion Document I ask whether the word "shove" has actually ever appeared in any statute!) What I quoted is a particular example of a typical problem of election rules. Absolute precision often requires many words and elaborate phrasing. I believe that both the design of the documentation and its wording — both closely prescribed — could be greatly improved. Basic clarity need not incompatible with more explanation of details.I hope that the foregoing paragraphs are helpful in your Committee’s consideration of these important issues. Yours sincerely,Sent by Email
R.J.B. Morris
Ms Ann Jones,
Chair, LGPS Committee,
National Assembly for Wales,
Cardiff bay,
CARDIFF,
CF99 1NA.