My Lords, there is a problem with permanent postal votes, and it is a problem for which I am partly responsible. It is the issue of matching the signatures on the applications to vote by post with the certificate that goes with the ballot papers when they are sent off. That arose from an amendment for
which I was responsible quite some years ago, when my concern was to reduce the prevalence of postal vote fraud. I thought it was important to have matching signatures on the application to vote by post and the certificate on the ballot paper. But I have some reservations about what will happen if we end permanent postal votes. It may mean you get a fresh signature on the application that can be compared with the certificate that goes with the ballot paper, and the problem at the minute for which I am partly responsible is that, very often, the signature is deemed not to match the signature on the application to vote by post. Sometimes this is because, as people get older, their handwriting changes, and large numbers of postal votes are rejected. There is a problem and a case for people re-registering.
My fear is that if we stop the system of automatic postal votes, trying to get people to renew their postal vote applications will favour the richest parties with the biggest databases, which are more able to contact people by post and ask them to re-register. Mitigating against that will be the new system for applying to vote by post online, and I very much welcome that. But I wonder if the Minister might be able to tell us how you can maintain a system of verifying signatures on an application to vote by post and a certificate that accompanies the ballot paper—and do so online.
I also wonder, for the millions of people who choose to vote by post, when their three-year limit comes to an end, how they will be told that they have to apply again to vote by post. It seems that one letter in the post would not be enough. We need an extensive government communication campaign to tell people that if they wish to apply to vote by post, they need to do so and to reapply by the end of their three-year limit.