The counts begin today at
three of the four Sussex
councils holding local
elections. Yesterday The
Argus revealed fundamental
flaws in the voting system
which could allow
widespread fraud.
So will the results be a fair
reflection of the will of the
people?
Social policy expert Stuart Wilks-Heeg calls for
reform of election law.
Tonight, as party representatives,
pundits and psephologists
begin to debate the
implications of the local
election results, one issue will
dominate - six months on from
the general election that never
was, how has Gordon Brown
fared in his first electoral test
as Prime Minister?
The minority of us intrigued by
such questions know the drill. As
the results flow in, maps of council
control will be generated, colourcoded
in red, blue and yellow.
The parties' net gains and losses
will be calculated. Political commentators
and academic experts
will assess the significance of these
statistics and others such as
regional variations in swing.
Hypothetical general election
outcomes will be projected, using
computer-generated representations
of the House of Commons.
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And ultimately, a judgement
will be reached about whether
Gordon Brown has passed his first
electoral test, albeit with twothirds
of registered voters failing to
cast ballots.
For many electoral administrators,
however, spending last night
supervising election counts across
England and Wales, the local elections
will represent a test of something
more fundamental.
Following an annus horribilis
for the British electorate in 2007, in
which numerous flaws in British
electoral procedures were exposed,
the local elections of 2008 arguably
represent a test of the very
integrity of the British electoral
processes.
A year ago, elections to the Scottish
Parliament were marred by a
dramatic rise in the number of
rejected ballot papers, arising from
poor ballot paper design and,
again, problems with electronic
counting.
When the independent Gould
report on the planning and management
of the elections was published
five months later, it concluded
that the voter was treated
as an afterthought.
Similar sentiments might have
been expressed in relation to
some of the pilots of electronic voting
and electronic counting in the
May 2007 local elections.
Following persistent problems,
e-counting pilots were abandoned
in Breckland, Warwick and Stratford
in favour of manual counts,
while an ambitious e-voting pilot
in Swindon was bedevilled by problems
with network connectivity.
While none of the outcomes of
these elections were ultimately
disputed, a legal challenge to the
result in the Central ward of
Slough Borough Council in 2007
highlighted even more serious concerns.
A Conservative councillor was
found to have committed largescale
postal ballot fraud, mirroring
convictions of Labour Party representatives
in Blackburn in 2002
and Birmingham in 2004.
The Slough case represented the
first conviction for electoral fraud
since the passage of the 2006 Electoral
Administration Act, designed
to strengthen safeguards against fraud.
As such, the verdict on the
Slough case reinforced the view
reached by a Council of Europe
monitoring report issued just two
months previously: "It does not
take an experienced election
observer, or election fraudster, to
see that the combination of the
household registration system
without personal identifiers and
the postal vote on demand arrangements
make the election system in
Great Britain very vulnerable to
electoral fraud."
While 2007 was a bad year for
the electorate, it could have been
much worse. After the 2007 local
elections, detailed evidence was
assembled by the Association of
Electoral Administrators (AEA)
pointing to the pressures imposed
on electoral administrators by constant
legislative change, short election
time-frames, problems with
suppliers and inadequate resources.
There is consensus among electoral
administrators that, had an
election been called for November
2007, administrative problems
could have prompted genuine concerns
about the legitimacy of the result.
With electoral administrators
still engaged in the process of
updating registers, an autumn
election could have disenfranchised
one million voters, in addition
to the estimated 3.5 million
who have long since disappeared
from the register. Millions more
voters who had requested postal
ballots risked being potentially disenfranchised
by the aftermath of
October's postal dispute.
At the time, the chief executive
of the AEA, John Turner, warned
that an autumn 2007 general election
would "probably be the worst
in living memory".
While the Government continues
to insist that appropriate safeguards
are in place, the Electoral
Commission has repeatedly called
for more stringent measures to
enhance ballot security and, most
recently, a suspension of electoral
pilot schemes.
At the end of 2007, it began its
own detailed review of the legal
and policy frameworks for elections
in the UK, arguing that "the
most important challenge facing
all of those involved in running
elections is to reaffirm a shared
commitment to putting electors at
the heart of electoral policy and
decision-making".
There is much more at stake
here than the technicalities of
administrative or legal practice.
When experienced international
election observers conclude that
elections "are very vulnerable to
electoral fraud", it is clear that the
integrity of our electoral process
should be a matter of great, and
immediate, public concern.
So, what is to be done? It is likely
that root and branch reform of
British electoral law and administration
is required. The task may
be less onerous than it might seem.
Many viable solutions to the problems
that have emerged in recent
years are already in place in one
part of the British Isles.
Over the past decade, electoral
reforms introduced in Northern
Ireland have provided for more
accurate electoral registers,
strengthened the role of electoral
administration, sharply reduced
accusations of malpractice, and
raised public confidence in the
electoral process. Somewhat ironically,
the task of emulating these
achievements in mainland Britain
is the key challenge facing electoral
policy today.
Stuart Wilks-Heeg is a
lecturer in social policy at the
University of Liverpool.
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