Staggering from one vote to the next
Bubble — By Harry Hayfield on July 2, 2010 4:29 pm
...And now I'm knackered. Are we in for voter fatigue?
THE BBC has reported: “A referendum on a new electoral system is expected to be held next year. Sources suggest that Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg is due to announce that a vote on the alternative voting system will be held on 5 May 2011. This is the same date as English local, Scottish Parliamentary and Welsh Assembly elections.”
Oh goody, says the psephologist in me. The potential for five different elections within the space of three months. Now, where’s that Google Earth file showing the constituency boundaries? However, the pragmatist in me says “Oh dear, we could have one or two small problems here.” What may these problems be?
- The last time a major devolved assembly election took place on the same day as something else was in 2007, when the Scottish Parliament (elected using First Past the Post and Additional Member System) was elected at the same time as the Scottish local elections (elected under the new system of the Single Transferable Vote). Net result? The “votes rejected” party polled 85,644 votes (4.25% of all votes cast). If there had been such a party, it might have won a seat. As a result it was decided to not hold the Scottish Parliament elections and Local Elections on the same day ever again.
- The referendum on AV could be held on the same day not only as the Assembly elections, but the same day as the referendum on more powers for the Assembly which is going to be a nightmare for candidates as they canvass for votes. You could easily have the situation where the same candidate says “Vote for me for the Assembly, vote YES on more powers and vote NO on AV”. Despite the fact that the idea is to increase turnout, all these conflicting opinions could reduce turnout.
- And finally, will no one think of the counting staff? Imagine the scene: you are a member of the counting staff and come into the count on polling day. You get a ballot box tipped onto your table and find that you have to sort and verify potentially five ballot papers before you can count a single vote. In 2007, the first constituency to declare was Islwyn at 1.30am (after three-and-a-half hours of sorting, verifying and counting two sets of ballot papers). If you add two referenda and and the potential for a local by-election as well on the same day, you would be lucky to get a declaration much before sunrise (5.30am in Wrexham and 6am in Haverfordwest).
Therefore, Mr Clegg, if you are reading this, can I, as a member of your party say the following: “Please, I am begging you, if not for myself then think of all those council staff, don’t hold the AV referendum on the same day as all those other elections. Stagger them.”
After all, the success of referenda is down to the activists who campaign for both sides and if they are being told to campaign for different things, there is only likely to be one outcome. Complete and absolute confusion all round!
Tags: Assembly, AV, devolution, Referenda
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4 Comments
unless, of course, there is a very good political reason for having them on the same day (ie the “doomed to failure” factor)
“I also think that no more than one election (or referendum) should take place at the same time. Never been very keen on referendums. When we do have one, the only point of it is to establish what the people actually, genuinely believe – and so often the water surrounding referendums is muddied with red herrings galore. The vote itself usually ends up being about tangential to the question actually put. Its about what the campaigns manage to persuade people that the question is. This haziness is inevitably multiplied when there’s more than one vote. And its often the case that one vote influences another – which is exactly the thinking behind the proposition that the referendum on AV be held on May 5th 2011.
“So there’s a choice. Either the AV vote is held later than May 5th (which is my preference) – or the Welsh General Election should be postponed by a month (as it is allowed to be). If the AV referendum is held on May 5th there could be a real danger of vote-overload amongst the electorate. We would have a referendum on moving to Part 4 of the Government of Wales Act (usually described as extra powers for the Assembly) in March, a vote on AV in May and the Welsh General Election in June. And Vaughan Roderick (who must never be discounted) thinks there might be a UK General Election in June if the AV referendum is lost.”
Don’t disagree with a word of this and couldn’t have put it better myself. Once more Glyn Davies MP hits the nail on the head:
http://glyn-davies.blogspot.com/2010/07/votes-plenty-next-year.html
I was going to compose a blog post myself on the topic, but when Glyn has spoken for me, I see no point.
Here’s a possible scenario (I’ve posted over on Our Kingdom): turnout in Wales and Scotland is approximately 50-55% but in England and NI it’s 30-35%; the vote is won by a very small margin, say 7,000 votes; the Daily Mail shouts ‘foul’ and demands that the votes of the ‘Celtic fringe’ be discounted.
So we are facing three votes – and there is a logical sequence to them. The result of the referendum on legislative powers will have a material effect on the nature of the campaigns and the manifestos put before the electorate. viz the difference between a programme for government with primary legislative powers, or an inevitably more modest programme with the current arrangement. Therefore this referendum must be held before the assembly election and with sufficient breathing space to allow for separate party campaigns to shape themselves following a period of joint campaigning. It is logical, therefore, that the referendum should take place in early spring, with the Assembly election being held in June rather than May – as already provided for in the Government of Wales Act. As it can be no later than June, there is a time imperative that dictates this sequence.
There is no such imperative in relation to the AV referendum. Indeed there is no requirement for it to be held in 2010 at all. All it requires is that it takes place before the next Westminster Election in 2015, but with a sufficient time gap to allow the Boundaries Commission to fulfil its various tasks. So the much vaunted Respect Agenda suggests to me that the ConDem Government should acknowledge the primacy of the 2011 Assembly Election and reschedule the AV referendum until at least autumn 2011 or better still spring 2012. Maybe this breathing space would have the added bonus of enabling the Government’s ideas to mature enough to propose a change more meaningful and democratic than AV which at present could be the only campaign on record that fails to generate a Yes campaign!