Electoral Reform: Getting the priorities right

Cast your mind back to election night. At 2200 BST as the polls closed the main topic of news was not the exit poll (which on reflection was pretty much spot on). Rather, it was reports from up and down the country, including Sheffield Hallam, Nick Clegg's own constituency, of voters locked out of polling stations unable to make a difference.

Initially, it seemed that voters had simply left it too late to cast their vote, but as the stories continued to emerge it became clear that many such disenfranchised voters had queued for over an hour, or had been forced to go home by long queues earlier in the evening only to try and come back and vote nearer the close of the polls. Worse, we saw stories of polling stations forced to close early because they had run out of ballot papers, while anecdotal reports again cast doubts on the validity of the postal voting mechanism.

Today the Electoral Commission has released their report on the 2010 UK Election. In it they state:

Our central message from this report is that the basic building blocks of electoral administration need long-term reform, support and maintenance: it is not enough simply to trust that the machinery of electoral administration will always work well and deliver elections to a consistently high standard; it is not enough simply to trust that those who want to undermine elections will resist the temptation to exploit the system; it is not enough simply to trust that people and systems will be able to adapt and cope with change without proper time to prepare.

In the report, the Commission determine that just over 1200 people were affected at 27 polling stations in 16 constituencies. Meanwhile, the report also highlights inadequate staffing of polling stations, errors in printing polling cards and ballot papers, and errors in counting votes. All in all, more than a little embarrassing given that this was also the first UK election to have observers from organisations across the world. There are pieces of good news of course. The electoral register for the 2010 election increased by 1.3 million to 45.6 million entries while, thanks to the various advertisements to register to vote, the eligible electorate rose by 700,000 in the months leading up to the election. How ironic, then, that given the huge interest generated and the numbers who registered to vote, the mechanisms were in some cases unable to support the interest while in many cases administration was stretched.

While Nick Clegg is promoting AV - a supposedly fairer means of counting votes which is backed by none of the usual exponents of proportional representation and which even the Prime Minister will campaign against - he ignores the Electoral Commission's wider concerns about the pressures on polling stations. 5 May 2011, the date for his unwanted referendum, is the same day as elections to the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, Northern Ireland Assembly and 280 local authorities in England.

Nick needs to get his priorities right!