Mr Gary Streeter
(Representing The Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission): The Electoral Commission has today published its statutory report on the administration of the 7 May 2015 elections, including the UK parliamentary general election. The commission’s report indicates that, overall, the elections were well run.
The commission’s research with the public demonstrates that the UK continues to enjoy well-run elections with high levels of voter satisfaction and confidence. Nine in 10 (91%) people surveyed said the elections were well-run. Within this, nearly all (94%) of those who voted in person at a polling station were satisfied with the process, and nearly all (97%) of those who voted by post were satisfied with voting this way.
The commission notes that this success is due to the dedication of all those who had a role in these elections: the returning officers (ROs) and their staff in election offices, polling stations and count centres across the UK; the candidates, political party volunteers and campaigners; and the millions of voters who participated. Any problems that did occur were confined to a small number of local areas and the commission has also today published a paper alongside its statutory report which addresses in more detail the performance of returning officers at the May 2015 polls and where there were failures against the commission’s performance standards.
The commission’s view at present is that there were high levels of compliance with the rules by parties and candidates. Later this year, the commission will publish campaigners’ spending returns which will give voters transparency in how they financed their election campaigns.
The May 2015 elections involved several important new changes for voters, campaigners and electoral administrators: there was a new individual electoral registration system for England, Scotland and Wales, which also allowed people to apply to register to vote online for the first time; and there were additional transparency rules for non-party campaigners in place for the first time at a UK parliamentary general election. The 2015 UK parliamentary general election was also the first held under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, which meant that the date of the elections was known since autumn 2011.
The general election alone was contested by 134 political parties and 3,971 candidates. In addition, in several hundred local authority areas in England, the poll for the UK parliamentary election was combined with other polls including parish council elections, elections for local mayors and local referendums.
A total of 2.6 million applications to register to vote were submitted during the Electoral Commission’s public awareness campaign, and contributed to over 1.5 million new additions to the electoral registers. The elections staff adapted to the level of demand and on the whole coped well, and 85% of voters surveyed were satisfied with the procedure for registering to vote. The May parliamentary electoral registers contained 46.4 million entries, an increase of 1% since February/March 2014, when the last registers were published under the household registration system.
The commission makes a number of recommendations to further improve voters’ experience and sustain trust in our democracy at future polls, based on lessons from the experiences of these most recent elections and long-standing policy recommendations.
Key recommendations include: the new online electoral registration service should now be extended to electors in Northern Ireland; people should be able to check whether they are already correctly registered to vote, using an additional online system, before submitting a new application to register to vote; all returning officers should include the correct postage on postal ballot packs for overseas electors so that they can be delivered to voters and returned as quickly as possible before polling day, with funding made available by the UK Government for ROs to deliver this.
The commission has also reiterated its 2014 recommendation that voters at polling stations in England, Scotland and Wales should be required to provide proof of their identity before being issued with a ballot paper. The commission will publish further information on proposals for a proportionate and accessible scheme for verifying the identity of electors at polling stations by the end of 2015, and recommends that the UK Government should legislate to introduce this requirement in time for elections in 2019.
The commission also recommends in its report that all UK Governments should ensure that any legislation relating to elections for which they are responsible is clear at least six months before it is required to be implemented or complied with by campaigners or electoral administrators, and suggests that if this cannot be achieved, statements should be tabled in the relevant legislature to explain the reasons.
Copies of the commission’s reports have been placed in the Library and it is also available on its website at:www.electoralcommission.org.uk
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