The next general election could encounter significant problems due to a mass of changes to the voting system, including mandatory ID, piled on to an already “creaking” system, the trade body for electoral staff has warned in a report.
While the Association of Electoral Administrators (AEA) said voter ID was just one among a series of issues, it warned that the relatively smooth rollout of the new system at May’s local elections could be “very different” at a general election.
Electoral workers having to check IDs and fill out a mass of new documents was contributing to a staffing crisis at polling stations, the AEA added, with one area reporting it only had two-thirds of the necessary people in May.
“Recruitment and retention of sufficient and competent temporary elections staff is increasingly challenging,” the report said. “We have growing concerns for future elections.”
The central concern raised in the report was the impact of new voting rules, including mandatory ID, which had, the AEA said, been “bolted on to processes already at risk of failure”.
Other changes due to come into force later this year include a shorter timetable for people to reapply for postal votes, limits on how many postal and proxy votes one person may handle, and an extension to voting for overseas-based UK citizens.
“These changes are being introduced to a system already creaking under pressure,” the report warned, saying there was a particular worry about a likely rush of postal vote applications when a general election is called.
A high-turnout general election combined with delays as staff check people’s IDs would almost certainly see queues develop in some places, the AEA said.
While there were relatively few reports of conflicts or threats connected to voter ID at May’s local elections, the report added, “we are concerned the situation could be very different at a contentious, high-turnout and high-profile UKPGE (UK parliamentary general election).”
The report said that even the rollout of voter ID in May brought problems, with software issues meaning the system that was meant to process people’s applications for a free voter authority certificate was “inoperable at a crucial stage”.
The new requirement for polling station staff to record a series of statistics connected to ID meant many said they felt “overwhelmed by paperwork”, adding to recruitment difficulties.
At the local elections, one regional returning officer who wanted to get 300 polling station staff only managed to find 218, while some filled the gap by having nearly 40% of workers come from areas not holding elections that year.
“In our surveys of members, issues about staffing have become the No 1 issue,” Peter Stanyon, the AEA’s chief executive said. “The feedback we received out of the May elections was that people are becoming far more hesitant about whether they actually want to put themselves through the pressures.”
The report calls for a rethink of how elections work, led by an independent commission, with recommendations including a greater use of technology, a longer general election timetable, and less divergence between how elections are run in the different UK nations.
A spokesperson for the levelling up and communities department said the government was “taking a sequenced approach to implementation of the Elections Act to ensure the electoral sector can deliver important changes to ensure the integrity of our elections”.
They added: “We will continue to work with the AEA and other electoral sector stakeholders to support the delivery of the changes.”
