UK Parliament / Open data

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My hon. Friend is completely right on the Government's policy, but there will also be a problem with the situation on the ground. For example, the chair of the Association of Electoral Administrators said that"““there is…capacity for the polling station staff to be confused as to which ballot paper should go to which elector.””" Why is that? The chair told the Committee that in Newport, there were 1,000 European voters, who were not eligible for all of the ballots. In some ballots, some people had postal votes, but in others they did not. Someone would come to the polling station and say, ““I want my vote,”” but they had already been sent a postal vote. In Wales, for proportionality, we vote for a list for the Assembly, but we also vote for a local Assembly Member. In addition, we might vote for a UK MP and in the AV referendum. The aggregate turnout will therefore be much higher. People may say, ““That's great. That's good for democracy,”” but if all those people turn up at a facility that is expecting fewer of them, and if the arrangements are as complex as I described, there will be more queuing. People will have to find different boxes of different colours and all the rest of it, so there is quite a lot of scope for major confusion that could undermine the democratic process that we all love.

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Reference

517 c815 

Session

2010-12

Chamber / Committee

House of Commons chamber
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