Overview
These elections were very well run by staff who were faced by an extraordinary situation. The Covid security put in place for the elections was impressive and generally followed the recommendations of Public Health England and the UK’s Electoral Commission.
The nature of many polling places can mean that the social distancing expected was difficult to deliver at times, but elections teams used the local resources well to either combine polling stations or to manage access in as Covid-secure manner as possible.
However, observers did note that quite often Covid security seemed to take precedence over electoral regulations. Our observer teams regularly saw family voting in polling stations, where one member of a family influences or guides another on the way to cast their vote. Our teams also observed a notable number of voters being turned away because they had attended the wrong polling station, were unregistered, or had a postal vote which precluded them from voting in person.
One of the most notable issues on polling day, especially in London, was the requirement for many voters to queue due to the Covid-19 requirements in place.
We also note that several of our observer teams deemed polling at a significant number of polling stations to be unsuitable for disabled access and some even excluded independent election observation as a policy, due to health and safety concerns. This, of course, includes wheelchair access, but also the location of polling booths and how they can be reached by voters with limited mobility.
Recommendations
- Presently, nominations require a so-called wet signature. We would encourage legislators to allow nominations to be conducted digitally, as councils accepted bank transfers for deposits for the May elections. Many documents are signed digitally today, and it seems a reasonable use of modern technology to allow parties and individuals seeking election to be nominated using a digital signature sent from a known email contact.
- Family voting, where one voter guides or oversees the vote of another person, continues to be a challenge and we recommend that staff are trained to identify it and to deal with it. We believe there is even more inhibition to interrupt this practice, at the moment, as it could require staff to physically intervene at a polling booth which could conflict with social distancing. As staff have been encouraged to stay behind their Perspex screen they have not intervened when they have seen the practice. But we also believe, because staff have been occupied with more duties than usual, that they have not identified family voting as they have not been focusing on the voters’ behaviour with a more constant stream of voters.
- Whilst information officers have been brought in specifically to advise voters presenting themselves at polling stations during the pandemic, we believe they would be an asset in all future elections to assist voters in understanding the process from the moment they arrive. This additional member of staff could also be used to help prevent cases of Family Voting and ensure votes are placed into the correct ballot box in polling stations with multiple boxes.
- We would recommend that Returning Officers remind polling staff that observers are legally allowed to enter the polling place and safe mechanisms for them to do so should be in place. In some council areas designated safe areas were set out for observation, distanced from others, whereas in other councils our presence was very much questioned. In some councils, in the May elections, it was decided by councils that some polling stations were unsuitable to allow free and independent observation of polling stations. We would recommend these not be used in future as this means they are unsuitable for holding a free and fair election.
- Voters who complete their postal vote incorrectly receive notification of this up to three months after the election. With increased use of postal votes in this election we believe there will be a significant increase in those that are disqualified due to incorrectly completed personal identifiers. We would encourage legislators to enact legislation to allow those who have not complied, and become effectively disenfranchised, to require returning officers to reissue postal votes to this group of voters to allow them, before polling day, to have their vote again.
- Overnight counting was not used in this election, and we believe, with the necessary security in place, that council staff and counting staff found this a much more conducive working environment than potentially exceptionally long counts through the night. We would recommend that next day counting for Scottish elections should be used in future elections as well.
