I have my poll card for the UK General Election on May 7. Later I will give more snippets about the UK voting process for general Kos readers. First I have to remind people living in the UK that they only have a few days left to register to vote. The deadline is April 20 and you can register on line here.
Note I have said residents as people other than UK citizens have the right to vote. You can also vote at General Elections if
you are over 18 on voting day, resident in the UK and:
You are a citizen of the Republic of Ireland.
You are a Commonwealth citizen, including Malta and Cyprus (see below).
If you are a citizen of an EU country that is not in the Commonwealth, you can also register to vote but you will only be able to cast a ballot at local government and EU elections, not the upcoming General Election.
You may already be on the electoral register and this process is for last minute registrations. The normal procedure is for you to register at the place you lived last September 30. Local governments distribute registration forms to all residential properties in their area around the start of September. This time the process has changed slightly. Previously it was the "head of household" who filled in the form for everybody living at the property. This time each voter had to fill in a form for individual registration. In most areas, the forms are sent out with the details from the previous year's registration details filled in. I for example only had to enter two passcodes on line (or sent by text) to confirm that nothing had changed. Earlier this year, at formal start of the Register in February, I got a confirmation that I was registered. I have also received my Poll Card (late last week) telling me where to vote. You may also have already received a
personally addressed "electoral address" from one of the parties. If you have received these sort of communications, you are already registered so no need to panic. You can confirm you can vote by phoning the electoral registration department at you local town hall.
I hope that the above has given US Kos readers an idea of the differences between the process in the UK. Note that party affiliations are not part of the Register. Parties have other ways of identifying their voters. More details below the LibDem flourish.
You may have spotted a difference between US and UK procedures. In the UK the Register of Voters is assembled under national procedures by local government departments. The Register goes into effect in February each year but lists those voters resident the previous September. As I indicated, the categories of people eligible to vote in different elections can be quite complex. Young people can vote as soon as they are 18 which means they have to be registered at least the year before, a note of their birthday is put on the register. There can be local government, parliamentary or even EU parliament by-elections after the May voting season* and before the start of the new Register the following February.
*Most elections are held in May. While this has been standard for non-Parliamentary elections, the timing of General Elections is now fixed. Previously the Prime Minister could call one at any time during the 5 year term, to his or her electoral advantage. The Fixed Term Parliaments Act set the period between elections at 5 years from the previous one. This means that at the moment they are held on the first Thursday in May. That could change if there are two votes of no confidence in the Government, a set period apart. In that case, a new General Election would be called and the 5 year term reset from that date.
The Register is a public document although only a "redacted" version is sold for commercial purposes. Candidates at elections receive a copy, these days usually as an electronic file. I mentioned that party affiliations are not recorded on the Register. To identify voters the parties have to go door to door canvassing the voters. These responses are then used to construct "get out the vote" lists. (More on GOTV later)
Candidates have to register and, for Parliamentary elections, pay a deposit of £500 by the Tuesday, three weeks before the election. They have to have a proposer, seconder and ten supporters, all who have to be registered voters in the electoral area, sign their nomination. The £500 deposit is returned if the candidate receives over 5% of the total vote. (The previous figures were £100 and 12% of the vote.) That deposit entitles the candidate to send one postal delivery to all voters in the area. The main parties will send personally addressed versions of this "election address" using the data from the Register to print out labels. This involves quite a lot of work as they also have to be delivered to the Post Office already sorted into postcodes. These are a sort of "zip code" that identifies down to individual blocks of apartments or short lengths of residential roads. Other parties without the volunteer resources delivery bulk election addresses to be delivered as ordinary leaflets (one way our Post Office gets extra income).
For many people, those post office delivered election addresses will be the only communication they have. They may well be visited by the main contending parties' volunteers to be asked for their vote. In contested seats they may well get extra leaflets hand delivered by party volunteers. Candidates have strict election expenses that would probably not allow a stamped addressed leaflet to be sent out to all voters. Candidates also have an Agent who is co-responsible for the proper accounting for all election expenses incurred by his candidate. The rules for what can be expended are complex but, for example, they cannot buy refreshments for their voters. All leaflets and posters have to carry the name and address of the Agent and the printers.
All personal voters will receive a "Polling Card" from their local council. This will tell them the voting hours and where to vote, the Polling Station. It will include important information about the voting process. Most importantly to speed the vote, it will include the voter's voting number. This usually identifies the polling station using two or three letters and then the number their name is recorded against on the Register. The voters are asked to take the card along to vote but this is not necessary.
On voting day, the voter goes to their local "polling place" which is usually a school or local community building. The "unusual" can include such places as Scout huts, pubs or even mobile vans going round. Outside each polling station there are often representatives of the main contending parties. They will ask the voter if they can take their number off the card or will ask for their name and address. This information is used by the parties to delete the voter from their lists of supporters so that only those who have yet to vote are called on later in the day. It is a convention that all the parties share the information from the voter and these encounters are usually very friendly.
The voter goes into the polling station and will be asked for their card. If they do not have it, they give their name and address. The number is then recorded on the stub of the voting paper and the voting paper itself is then torn off and given to the voter. The staff are usually local government employees seconded for the day (or taking the day off and being paid). The voter will then go to a small booth to vote using the supplied pencil. The voter is usually alone for this however the visually impaired can have a supporter to assist them. (Postal votes are readily available but many prefer to attend in person. I'll not detail the process for getting an "absentee ballot")
UK General Elections (and many others) are "first past the post" in single member constituencies. In the General Election therefore the voter marks a single X against the candidate of their choice. Another mark (or rude message about all politicians) that might identify the voter could be challenged by party representatives overseeing the counting and declared a "spoilt ballot".
As you might have gathered, running a full scale campaign is heavily dependent on volunteers. To give an idea, a constituency might have 30 or even more polling stations. To provide number takers for all of those from early morning to evening might need 90 or so individuals. Plus you need "runners" to take the numbers to a local party office (usually in someone's home) so that the staff there can tick off those who have voted from the list of those to be "knocked up" or called on to be reminded to vote. Then you need a set of fairly mobile volunteers to actually do the "knocking up" in the early afternoon (to catch those at home perhaps not working), early evening (after work) and last minute if the vote is close. Efficient parties can monitor that by using statistical analysis and may even record known opponents' voters to assess their turnout. These local offices usually report to the party's constituency office so the Agent and Candidate get the overall picture.
Of course that is a very full blown campaign and is only likely in places where the party has a serious chance of winning a closely fought election. Traditionally that has meant there was a main "battleground" of marginal seats in perhaps a fifth or less of the overall number. In many areas, like Glasgow for Labour or the Home Counties for the Conservative, the seats were so "safe" that the outcome was inevitable. Often in such constituencies, the party's election organisation was moribund. This year this factor may have a serious effect on the outcome.
In Scotland for example, the enthusiastic newcomers to the SNP may well provide the sort of impetus to replace a sitting Labour member in some surprising places. All predictions are that the SNP will overturn Labour in a large number of seats in Scotland, enough to deprive them of a majority.
The Conservatives in England are facing a different problem. The effect of UKIP is extremely difficult to assess. It's leader Nigel Farage, has been playing to his core xenophobic vote with a repeated meme of the National Health Service having to pay for antiviral drugs for HIV infected recently arrived foreigners and how immigrants are taking over the homes of Britons (I am not exaggerating!). UKIP of course is taking over the Conservatives' extreme right wing supporters - the sort who believe "we should be out of the EU and again trade with the Empire...cough.... er Commonwealth". In reality, their is only a likelihood that they can muster the support in a handful of constituencies to actually win. The spanner thrown in today was a £1 million donation to UKIP by Richard "Dirty" Desmond, owner of the Daily and Sunday Express newspapers. These rags will no doubt endorse UKIP. "Dirty" is so called by Private Eye because he made his money with a string of soft porn publications. . On the upside, targeting seats with publicity is going to be difficult given the election expenses limits.... which could lead to some interesting disputes if they do get any candidates elected. Overall though, their effect will likely be to depress the Tory vote but by not enough to effect the safest seats. There has been some evidence that UKIP had started to peel off some right wing/anti-EU but traditional Labour voters. In short, the overall effect of UKIP at this election is probably going to be fairly minor.
I mentioned election limits. These also apply to the parties' national organisations. The big difference from the USA of course is that there is no purchasing of TV time. Parties are allocated time for "Party Election Broadcasts" in accordance to a calculation made by the public service channels (the old analog stations) These short 5 or 10 minute slots are broadcast at different times through an evening by the different PSBs.
During the day the Candidate often will go round the polling stations thanking the staff and greeting the party worker. They are not allowed to canvass passing voters within a defined limit (100 yards IIRC) of the entrance to the polling station. These limits also apply to things like the playing of loudspeakers. The main activity of course is working with the agent on overseeing the GOTV effort. After the polls close, it's usually off to the count. A few places delay the start of the count until 9am to give staff a rest (and, I suspect, to avoid paying overtime at overnight rates!).
At the polling station the staff reconcile the number of ballots they have left, those issued and replace if the voter made a mistake. These together with all the documentation usually go in a separate ballot box. At the count the spoilt, replace ballots are checked against the returns. The relevant ballot boxes are opened and the number simply counted to confirm the returns from the staff. (A few may be missing, people sometimes walk out with them without putting them in the ballot box!). The staff then sort the ballots into piles for the different candidates. Here party observers can challenge an improper vote and ask for a ruling. This will be by the "returning officer", the official in charge of the count. He will usually be the head of the electoral registration department and will formally be the "deputy". The full post is usually ceremonially with the Mayor or head of the Council.
The count proceeds with a number of checks that all are being accounted for. The different candidates' votes are counted, usually by rubber banding each batch of 100 and then assembling these batches in dividers on a table. This is where you can see the different levels of support. In many places the result will be obvious but in close seats, these are the first indication of the likely winner. The Returning Officer will then call the candidates and their Agents together and tell them the result. At that stage a recount can be requested. This may be because of the closeness of the votes of the two leading candidates. Sometimes it will be because a candidate would just lose their £500 deposit. The first stage tends to be a verification that the bundles are in the right dividers. That would go back to the group and again a close top two or three would likely mean a recount. There could even be a verification that each pile contains the correct number for the correct candidate. No doubt you want to know what happens if two (or more?) candidates get the same number of votes after a number of recounts. It is then for the Returning Officer to organize a means which can be the toss of a coin or drawing of a card. This is a situation very unlikely in a General Election but has happened at local government level.
Once the outcome has been determined the result will be announced. This sometimes by the elected member who is the ceremonial Returning Officer, more usually it is the deputy Returning Officer who is a paid official of the council (local government officer in the parlance). The winner will then give a speech which traditionally starts with thanks to the staff at the polling stations, the police for overseeing order, the rest of the staff, their Agent and workers; finally to their losing opponents for the nature of their campaign (sometimes pointedly not directed at some opponents). Then the bragging starts. The second candidate will give a speech - starting by joining in the thanks and usually trying to give consolation to their own workers. By that time the hall has usually cleared but some may remain for speeches by a close third.
Well I hope you get a flavor of the "behind the scenes" in the upcoming election here.