Clause 32 - Ballot paper design
Electoral Administration Bill
1:00 pm
Jonathan Djanogly (Shadow Solicitor General (Also Assists Shadow Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs), (Assist the Home Affairs Team); Huntingdon, Conservative)
I shall discuss amendments Nos. 59 and 60 together, as they combine to produce our intended result. The style and content of ballot papers is prescribed by statute. The current design of ballot papers for first-past-the-post elections is widely accepted as being easy to understand. There are long-standing issues about the use of the official mark, which has to be applied by hand to each ballot paper at the polling station under rule 37 of the parliamentary election rules.
The procedure dates from the Ballot Act 1872. On occasion, votes have been invalid because of human error in failing to apply the official mark. That was a feature of the election petition at Winchester after the 1997 general election. For some years, there has been disquiet about the policy of numbering ballot papers and counterfoils, in case the two are combined to facilitate vote tracing other than in the context of an election petition or criminal investigation, although counterfoils can be used to trace electoral offences.
That issue was explored in 1997 by the Home Affairs Committee, which supported a limited view that the system played little part in the prevention of personation, and that concerns about possible abuse of the system by state agencies outweighed other considerations. The Electoral Reform Society evidence considered that the existing system should be maintained because of its use in local government elections on a number of occasions to uncover fraud. The issue was raised again by the Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe report on the 2005 election, which recommended the abolition of serial numbers on ballot papers. The Government response to that report set out the justifications for the current approach.
The Electoral Commission made proposals to improve the security aspects of ballot papers in its policy report ''Equal access to democracy'', summarised in ''Voting for change—An electoral law modernisation programme''. It recommended the use of bar codes in place of serial numbers on ballot papers for detection of fraud, and watermarks in place of the official mark to reduce the scope for human error to invalidate the vote cast. The Government response accepted both proposals. The Department for Constitutional Affairs paper of May 2005 announced proposals to change the design of ballot papers in order to improve security. The proposed changes were to improve security markings on ballot papers through watermarks or security printing and to replace serial numbers on ballot papers with bar codes, allowing fraudulent votes to be more easily identified and removed.
The paper noted that bar coding had been used in a number of recent electoral pilots, notably in the European parliamentary elections of June 2004, local elections and the north-east assembly referendum in November 2004. Bar coding would also allow electors to check with the returning officer whether their postal votes had been received before the close of voting. It would also assist returning officers who are asked to issue replacement ballot papers to electors who had not received them. At present, that is possible only up to 5 pm on polling day.
The May 2005 policy paper also announced proposals to allow the automated production of postal vote documents that did not look identical to the ballot paper. That has been the subject of a number of pilots. At present, statutory requirements ensure that postal ballots are identical to those cast at polling stations. The policy paper says:
''The law as it stands was originally designed to ensure that the rare postal vote did not stand out against the ones cast at the polling station which would potentially allow people to identify how someone voted''.
Clause 32 amends the provisions on the design of ballot papers to allow for two columns of named candidates in elections with several candidates. It allows the Secretary of State to make regulations on ballot paper design so that primary legislation is no longer required to make changes. I see that the Minister of State is busily preparing herself for her response to the debate.
We accept many of the suggested security improvements to ballot papers. Our amendments seek to avoid giving the Secretary of State such a wide power to decide on the nature and design of ballot papers without parliamentary approval. Amendment No. 59 would require consultation with all registered political parties before the Secretary of State could prescribe a different form of ballot paper. Amendment No. 60 would require regulations made under these provisions to be laid before Parliament and approved by the resolution of each House.