From Kent in the South East to Lancashire in the North West and from Northumberland in the North East to Cornwall in the South West, Democracy Volunteers deployed election observers to every local authority and mayoralty with elections on Thursday May 1st. A team of observers was also deployed to the Westminster Parliamentary By-election in Runcorn and Helsby.
Data collected from council and mayoral elections, as well as the parliamentary by-election, suggests that so-called ‘family voting’, which occurs when one voter influences another voter to vote a certain way or not to vote at all, which was outlawed in 2023 by the Ballot Secrecy Act, continues to be a challenge. Signage is now available to Returning Officers to tell voters that this is unlawful and was seen in many polling stations across the area of observation.
Observers were also assessing access issues for those with disabilities as a well as a number of other aspects of the voting process which will be reported on by Monday 26th May, when the final observation report for the local elections will be issued.
Commenting on the observation deployment, Dr John Ault, Director of Democracy Volunteers, said;
‘With teams in every area with elections, the data collected seems to suggest a number of things which we will report on in greater depth when our final report is issued in May.’
‘Firstly, family voting persists as being a problem, with staff rarely intervening when it occurs and, despite new signage being available, further measures clearly need to be taken to deter this practice, which often acts to undermine the secrecy of the ballot especially for women.’
‘We saw family voting to a similar degree as normal in both the local elections and the parliamentary by-election in Runcorn and Helsby.’
‘I’d like to thank our team of volunteer observers for working so hard on Thursday and it is a testament to their dedication, as well as some very long drives to large geographic areas, to have managed to observe in every election taking place.’
Learn more about Family Voting and the Ballot Secrecy Act 2023 with Lord Hayward in our podcast, Observations.
