#DeniedMyVote - Postal votes

In a further post I'll be looking at the problems EU citizens residing in the UK had with voting in the European elections last week but for now a quick look at the other reported element, postal ballot papers arriving too late to be returned in time.

Postal voting has been around for a while but has steadily grown over the years, particularly after 2001 when postal voting on demand was introduced. (Previously it was only available to those with good reason for being unable to get to their designated local polling station, such as employment, education, ill health, holidays or living on an island without its own polling station.) Note that provision is more restricted in Northern Ireland. It is very unlikely that the on demand provision will be curtailed again, not least because many political activists spend general election polling days outside their own home area and postal voting allows them to still vote with ease.

At the same as postal voting has increased, postal services have continued to decline. Long gone are the days when a person could receive a letter at the breakfast table inviting them to afternoon tea somewhere in town and have the time to compose and send a reply that would be received by the host in time to prepare. Collections and deliveries are less frequent, such that it now takes longer to send something out and get a reply back in time.

Elections are run on a surprisingly tight timetable, with just four weeks between the close of nominations and polling day, with a further requirement that all votes must be with the local Returning Officer's team by the close of polling. There is limited time in which to get the ballot papers printed and sent off.

Postal votes are normally dispatched around eleven working days before polling day, which is generally enough time domestically although it would help if election services across the country aimed for better consistency of expectations. There have been many cases of people asking for one due to a holiday but it doesn't arrive before they go away despite their social media being full of others casting their postal votes.

However international postal services are another matter and the situation is not helped by election services that use consolidation services to send a whole bundle to a remailer to send on at cheaper local rates. There are countries that no longer have universal daily collections and deliveries (if they ever did), and indeed many such countries only require their own postal votes to be sent & post marked by the close of polling, not received. Reply envelopes may not have the quickest postage option on them. As a result many people have reported receiving their postal vote packs far too late to be able to return them in time to be counted and some have even reported receiving their votes after the declaration of results.

The short amount of time from confirmation the European elections were taking place to polling meant that many were caught unprepared (and as very few local government ballot papers are sent overseas there weren't off the shelf contracts in place for the council elections that could be adapted) and the length of the ballot paper would have added to delay because of the limited number of printers that can handle it, but reports of overseas postal votes arriving too late have come up in other elections and referendums that have had rather more time to prepare. However they haven't received so much attention but this is not something can be easily ignored or dismissed as a one-off problem.

It is possible that the UK's postal services will be further curtailed in years to come, placing greater pressure on the tight election timetable if postal votes can't be sent out and returned in good time. Various solutions exist, ranging from internet voting to a longer period between nominations and polling to allowing postal votes to arrive after polling day at the cost of instant overnight final results, but all bring their own drawbacks and would provoke resistance.

The overseas votes are already facing this problem and again some solution could be found, but it's hard to see the timetable being extended or more radical solutions such as internet voting being introduced purely for them. Some countries have overseas voting at embassies, but they often don't have the requirement for all ballot papers to be in with the local Returning Officer by the close of poll. Perhaps embassies could be given the task of printing and dispatching ballot papers locally as a means to cut down on the transit time (and maybe even receiving them, though I don't know how workable a solution that is).

Longer term a number of problems with overseas voting may be better solved by introducing dedicated ex pat constituencies (as already happen in other countries) that could have their own timetables and arrangements rather than being at the mercy of the domestic timetable.

Rethinking postal voting

There was a good piece recently over on ConservativeHome by Tim Archer on Why we need electoral reform – and it's got nothing to do with AV. It covers three areas - registration, postal voting and the ease of fraud at polling stations - and there are good suggestions in both the piece and the comments afterwards. I'll address each one in turn, today starting with postal voting.

Tower Hamlets issued 24,898 postal ballots, that's 25% of all the votes cast. Why? For a few, a postal vote makes the difference between being able to cast your vote and not. But a postal vote can also facilitate fraud and intimidation. It's hard to intimidate someone in a secret ballot where you can't follow them into the polling booth. It's much easier though to turn up mob handed at someone's door the day their postal vote has arrived and 'help' them fill it in. Postal votes go missing in the post, take longer to count, are more expensive and increasingly, because of their complexity to complete, disenfranchise the very people who want to cast their vote in the first place. My experience in Tower Hamlets has led me to conclude that we need to revert to the pre-2000 system of needing a reason to have a postal vote, something that Northern Ireland has already re-adopted.

When I first applied or a postal vote I had to jump through quite a few hoops, made harder by the fact I was a student away at university and not contactable by phone (yes there was a time when not everyone had mobiles). Nowadays I am permanently registered for a postal vote and it's a simple process of ticking a box on the annual registration form. I find it convenient, especially as it means I don't have to make sure I'm around my home between 07:00 & 22:00 on polling day (and there are often days when work and/or research trips and/or evening functions mean I'm not).

But it's a system that's easily open to fraud. I used to have to get someone else to "witness" my declaration statement when sending back my postal vote; I no longer have to do that. All that is required is my signature. It's also worrying just how many postal votes can go astray, especially in places with communal letterboxes. Then there's the intimidation mentioned above.

Something needs to be done to tighten up the system but it also needs to be compatible with modern lifestyles. A lot of members of the public find voting on Election Day inconvenient, especially given the awkward location of some polling stations, whilst it's also more common these days to find oneself away at short notice. The old system of having to have one of a strictly limited set of reasons and make various calls and postal applications was incredibly inefficient and I'm not convinced that simply switching back to it will improve matters.

But what about a system of "early voting", as practised in other countries? There they set up advanced polling stations in central locations - town halls and the like - covering multiple polling districts and over the course of a couple of weeks voters are able to visit at their leisure and cast their vote. It requires the same level of checks as at polling station on Election Day itself and also when done right can cost a lot less than huge numbers of postal votes. It also makes it easier to ensure both that the early voter gets their ballot paper and that it makes it back in time.

And it's an idea that has precedent in this country. In past centuries elections were not carried out on a single day. Instead the polling station would open for days on end and voters would turn up over a longer period - especially helpful in an era when travel was more limited.

The other system used abroad that has possibilities is allowing votes to be cast at any of a number of polling stations. In most of these jurisdictions voters are assigned an individual polling station but those who are elsewhere in the constituency/city/state/country on polling day can go to any polling station and have ballot papers for their own constituency printed & stamped on demand; these votes are then placed in an envelope, sealed & signed, then transported to the count in the original constituency where they are verified against the election register to confirm the voter has not voted more than once, then added to the count.

(One side-effect of this is that votes can take some time after the close of polling to arrive, and so the final declaration takes longer. It's this system, plus a requirement that postal votes only be sent, not received, by polling day that means the election count in countries like Australia seemingly go on for weeks. But is it really essential to have a final result declared within five hours of polling closing?!)

Both of these would be a very useful alternative to postal voting on demand and would make it easy to limit the latter to just the cases where voters are out of the area for a protracted period - people on holiday, students away at university and so forth. They deserve serious consideration as means not only fight fraud in the system but also to making voting more accessible.