Political Parties and Elections Bill

moved Amendment No. 84: 84: After Clause 24, insert the following new Clause— "Rejected postal votes (1) Schedule 1 to the 1983 Act (parliamentary elections rules) is amended as follows. (2) After rule 31A (return of postal ballot papers) there is inserted— "Postal ballot papers not counted (1) Where a postal vote has been returned but not counted because the personal identifiers— (a) are absent, (b) are incomplete, or (c) do not match the personal identifiers provided with the application for a postal vote, the returning officer must record this information on a separate list (the list of postal votes returned but not counted) in addition to making the entry on the marked list. (2) The list of postal votes returned but not counted is a relevant election document for the purposes of section 42 of the Electoral Administration Act 2006. (3) The returning officer shall write to each elector whose returned postal vote has not been counted for a reason listed in paragraph (1) to inform them of the circumstances in which their vote has not been counted."." The noble Lord said: My Lords, as I am going to refer to some of the local information on Pendle about which the noble Lord, Lord Bates, was asking, I should declare an interest in that I was the Liberal Democrat agent for most of the county council candidates in the recent elections and attended counts on both Friday morning and Sunday evening. The matter raised by the amendment was one I referred to briefly in Committee on a different amendment, but I have now brought it back following the experience in the recent elections as there is a serious problem that needs to be tackled. I am moving the amendment in the hope that it is helpful. The amendment requires the returning officer to do two things. First, the returning officer must keep a separate list of those postal votes that have been returned, or where envelopes have been returned but where the votes have not been counted owing to a failure of the personal identifier system. In other words, the personal identifiers are absent, incomplete, or do not match the information that the council holds on file as a result of the application for a postal vote. I should say that I am particularly grateful to Gillian Hartley, who is the Pendle Council elections officer, for helping me to understand how the system works and what happens, and for providing me with the information that I shall offer a little later. Secondly, the amendment requires the returning officer to write individually to each of the electors whose votes have not been counted because of a mismatch in or absence of the personal identifiers. At the moment, that does not happen. At the moment, two lists are produced after the election, which are available to candidates and political parties under the approved conditions. The first is the marked register, which shows the people who have turned up at polling stations and been given a ballot paper—and, presumably voted. The second is the postal voters list, which provides a list of those postal votes which have been returned at that election. The postal voters list includes all the envelopes that have been returned, because the list is compiled from information on the envelopes before they are opened and before the votes are opened, so it includes those which are not subsequently counted. The provision of that list, which did not happen before the passing of the Electoral Administration Act 2006, was partly a result of discussion that took place in your Lordships' House on previous legislation, when it became clear that that list was required. Before then, the only list required was of the postal votes issued, not those returned. The current system is that if you send a postal vote back, the envelope is returned, received and opened. Inside that envelope, there should be a smaller envelope, sealed up, that includes the ballot paper and the piece of paper that contains the personal identifier. When those personal identifiers are checked—I have to say that Pendle, like most of the councils in the north-west, did a 100 per cent check of postal votes and the returning officer decided to do it last year in view of the controversy over previous postal votes in Pendle—the sheet of personal identifiers comes in, it is fed into the machine that checks them and that computer-type machine checks whether the information about date of birth and signature match the information that the council holds on its records. If the machine thinks that they match, it goes through. If the machine thinks that they do not match, or it is not sure, it is spewed out and on the screen, on the monitor, is displayed the information that the council holds on its records. That is then compared visually and manually by counting staff with the paper that has come in, and they decide whether, yes, they match sufficiently or no, they do not. That is how it actually works. We discussed this in Grand Committee, I brought evidence from two county councils by-elections this spring in Nelson, which is part of Pendle, in one of which the number of rejected votes, because of a mismatch or absence of identifiers, was more than 5 per cent of the total, and in the other, which was a substantially Asian ward, more than 10 per cent. This year, in the six county divisions within Pendle, which make up Pendle and the area that counted for the European elections, 485 returned envelopes were rejected—in other words, the ballot paper was not looked at and not counted—for failure to provide a matching identifier. In some cases, the identifiers were absent; in some cases, only one of them was there; in most cases, they did not match. This was approximately 4.5 per cent of the total, on a return of postal votes of about 70 per cent. In the most Asian division—I do not have the exact figure, but I think the Asian electorate is about 45 per cent of the total—the return of postal votes was 81.7 per cent, and 11.6 per cent of the envelopes returned were rejected. So across the area, about one in 20 was rejected, and in this particular division, it was more than one in 10. I am interested in the Electoral Commission’s comment on this amendment, and I will read it: ""The Commission has since July 2007 recommended that the Government should enable Returning Officers and Electoral Registration Officers to access and use data that identifies electors whose postal votes were rejected due to a mismatch of identifiers. This information should be used by the Electoral Registration Officer to write to all electors whose postal votes were rejected due to a mismatch of identifiers, inviting them to provide fresh identifiers. The Returning Officer should also write to any elector where they believe that their postal ballot was used in error by someone other than the elector, advising of the correct process and the possible penalties for malpractice"." Whether these figures show that people are simply making a mess of the system, or whether they show that, in some cases at least, there are attempts at voting fraud which have not succeeded because the postal vote identifier system is working, there is a problem. If one in 20 or one in 10, or something of that order—450 votes across the borough—are being sent in by people expecting them to be counted, and they are not being counted because the personal identifiers are absent or not matching, there is something wrong. It seems to me that this is information to which candidates and political parties should have access after the election, because it is fairly obvious that, in some cases, there may be prima facie evidence of fraud. One of the reasons why candidates and political parties are allowed access to the marked register and the list of postal votes returned is precisely so that they can be investigated, and if people want to challenge an election or ask the police or the returning officer to get involved, they can do so. This seems to be a piece of information that also ought to be available, but at the very least, the electors concerned should be written to, because otherwise there may well be a lot of people who are sending back their votes in good faith, who are making the same mistake time after time. It may be that they have two signatures, and they are just using the wrong one—they are using their personal signature and not their cheque-book signature or whichever way around it is—and votes are being lost. There is, therefore, a problem here arising from the system of personal identifiers that was very properly introduced in order to make postal voting a bit more secure. There is a problem and it needs to be addressed. My final point is that I am told by Mrs. Hartley that the information on the proportions and numbers of these votes which have been rejected for these reasons are part of the information that is being sent off, she says, to Plymouth. I assume it is the elections centre at the University of Plymouth that is collecting information, as she says, on behalf of the Government. So there ought to be a lot of this information gathered in fairly soon from around the country. It is a serious problem and one that needs to be addressed. This amendment is an attempt to do that. I beg to move.