Political Parties and Elections Bill

Noble Lords will wish to ensure that at elections, returning officers are required to check the personal identifiers on all returned postal votes. The introduction of personal identifiers has been a key measure in strengthening the integrity of postal voting. Given the technical and logistical factors involved for electoral administrators in implementing personal identifiers for postal voters, we decided to specify that at elections returning officers are required to check at least 20 per cent of returned postal votes but may check 100 per cent if they choose to do so. We think that 20 per cent is statistically a robust figure for sample checking, and is a good indicator of whether fraud is occurring. If the returning officer considers that there is a real risk of fraud, he may specify from the outset that all postal voting statements will be checked. If the returning officer decides to begin with 20 per cent checking, that level can be increased at later opening sessions if evidence of fraud emerges. Obviously, noble Lords’ comments on this issue have been noted. We agree in principle that all postal votes should be checked, and will wish to require 100 per cent to be checked when it is practicable to do so. A key factor in determining when it will be appropriate to move to 100 per cent checking is when there is deemed to be sufficient capacity within postal voting software systems to support 100 per cent checking. At the forthcoming elections for the European Parliament on 4 June 2009, the regulations for these elections follow the provisions for parliamentary and local elections and therefore require that at least 20 per cent of returned postal votes are checked. However, as I already told the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, the regional returning officers have indicated that they wish all returned postal votes to be checked within each region, where the software systems can support that. We are supportive of these officers in wishing all postal votes to be checked where that is possible. However, it would be premature to mandate 100 per cent checking in law at this stage given that we cannot be certain that the necessary software systems are in place to deliver 100 per cent checking across all regions in Great Britain.