Changing the way you vote

Sixteen councils are piloting new ways to vote

Friday, 07, Apr 2006 12:00

Councils across England and Wales are testing out new ways to get more people to vote this year, while also trying to stop any possibility of vote rigging.

Previous attempts to improve low turnout – which rarely rises above a third of the electorate – have seen councils introduce all-postal voting, text and even internet voting.

Postal voting in particular proved a success - in the 2002 local elections, 13 councils used all-postal ballots, boosting the average turnout to 44 per cent, compared to 34 per cent nationally. In some areas up to 60 per cent of the electorate turned out.

However, with success also came failure – a judge last year found evidence of vote-rigging in the election of six Labour party councillors in Birmingham, and said the postal voting system would "disgrace a banana republic".

As a result, although councils are trying new ways of getting people to cast their vote in May's polls, these will be confined to small gestures.

Voters in Rushmoor borough will be able to vote at the local military base, those in Shrewsbury and Atcham could cast their ballot in a mobile polling booth and residents of both Lewisham and Broxbourne boroughs will be able to vote before polling day.

And to enforce the importance of voting on the next generation, children will be allowed into polling booths in Epping Forest, while residents will also have election information sent to their homes before polling day.

Meanwhile, a number of councils will be testing new measures to tackle vote-rigging, although some of them may seem rather obvious. For example, voters in Peterborough, Brentwood and Lewisham will have to sign for their ballot paper at the polling station.

Changes to the postal voting system, outlined as part of the electoral administration bill, will also see voters in pilot areas having to sign for their postal votes. The government hopes that these will prove successful, and can be rolled out across the country.

Until the security of the postal voting system has been ensured, however, ministers have scrapped the idea of all-postal pilots, while plans to get people to vote using an automatic voting booth are unlikely to be repeated after failing to have any major effect on turnout.