Tag Archives: turnout

Police and Crime Commissioner elections: increasing engagement in low turnout elections

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police, policeman back

On 5 May 2016, voters in 41 police force areas (excluding London) will go to the polls to elect Police and Crime Commissioner (PCCs). During the last PCC election, in November 2012, just over 36 million people were registered to vote in the elections, but only 5.49 million votes were cast (a turnout of around 15%). This is the lowest recorded level of participation in a peacetime non-local government election in the UK.

What are PCC’s?

The Conservative party, who formed one part of the coalition government with the Liberal Democrats, made the introduction of PCCs an election pledge in 2010. Elected PCCs are intended to be the democratic link between the public and the police. The government’s aims in setting up the PCCs were:

  • to form a key part of the localism agenda – giving power over local issues back to local people
  • to replace  the system of police authorities which had existed since 1964
  • to raise accountability, increase transparency and create legitimacy within local level policing

PCCs hire and fire chief constables, control budgets running into hundreds of millions of pounds and set local priorities for policing in their area. But when the role was introduced and the first elections for the posts held in 2012, turnout was disappointingly low . Public knowledge of the existence of the role was limited, as was understanding of the PCCs’ powers and responsibilities.

Supporters of the scheme heralded it as a new age of local policing that was more responsive to local needs. But some critics have questioned the paradox of “independent” commissioners who campaign on a party platform and point to some of the potential challenges of what they call “politicising policing”. Others have questioned the notion of legitimacy when the turnout for the first election was so low and the understanding of the role of commissioners was so limited.

Further to this, as many as 44% of current PCCs are not standing for re-election this time round. As a result, there is some frustration that people will not have the opportunity to judge PCCs on their record. As the elections approach, PCCs have been engaging with local people to try and raise awareness of their roles and of the upcoming election to ensure a better turnout than the first time around.

Rt Hon Theresa May MP, Home Secretary, at 'The Pioneers: Police and Crime Commissioners, one year on'

Rt Hon Theresa May MP, Home Secretary, at ‘The Pioneers: Police and Crime Commissioners, one year on’ Image by Policy Exchange via Creative Commons

The next stage of reform: new powers for PCCs?

In February 2016, the Home Secretary, Theresa May delivered a speech to the Policy Exchange think tank outlining the challenges which have faced PCCs since the elections of 2012 and setting out her vision for their future.

In addition to promoting increased transparency, accountability and cooperative joint working between forces in order to raise standards and cut costs, the government is also seeking to widen the role of PCCs within the criminal justice system. The proposals have still to be outlined in full, but they include collaborative working and strategy creation between Police, schools and the wider criminal justice system. In addition, under the Policing and Crime Bill currently going through Parliament, PCCs will be able to take responsibility for fire and rescue services (where a local case can be made), and to create a single employer for the two services.

It is clear that there also needs to be a discussion about how PCCs could fit within the emerging context of locally elected mayors and the wider devolution agenda. The proposals for devolution for Greater Manchester mean that the role of PCC will be abolished in 2017, and transferred to the mayor once elections have taken place.

Why don’t people vote?

Analysts have suggested that a lack of voter awareness and the November timing of the election both contributed to the lack of interest and low levels of voter participation in the 2012 PCC elections.

Recent changes to voting registration in the UK have resulted in a drop in the number of registered voters, leading some to predict that turnout in this year’s PCC elections will not be much higher than in 2012. However, a surge in people registering for the upcoming EU referendum, may counteract this trend. The fact that PCC elections are also being held on the same day as more high profile local government elections may also encourage more people to vote, although the questions of voter awareness of PCCs’ roles remain.

Other suggested reasons for low turnout  have been the use of the supplementary vote system, and poor candidate engagement during the election campaign. Even after the elections, 1 in 3 people in England were unable to name or recognise their local PCC.

Time will tell whether this situation improves after the 2016 vote.

VOTE

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The Idox elections team delivers innovative, cost effective solutions to meet the changing needs of the UK and international electoral services market. This year, we shall again provide election management services to support the local government and PCC elections in England and Wales and the Scottish Parliament elections.

Eligible voters have until 18 April 2016 to register to vote in the local council and Police & Crime Commissioner elections in England and the Holyrood election in Scotland.The deadline for voter registration for the European Union referendum is 7 June. Further information is available here.

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Also on our blog: Pushing the vote out: how can more people be persuaded to exercise their most basic civic right?

Pushing the vote out: how can more people be persuaded to exercise their most basic civic right?

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By James Carson

With elections for the devolved assemblies, Greater London Assembly, the Mayor of London, Police and Crime Commissioners, some local councils and the European Union referendum all taking place in 2016, voters across the UK will be going to the polls more often than usual this year.

Or will they?

Last year saw a 66.1% turnout for the UK General Election. At the time, this was headlined as a “bumper election turnout”. But the figure was considerably lower than the highest ever turnout at a general election – 83.9% in 1950. Turnout for local and European elections has been even lower than for general elections, and in 2012 the first elections for Police and Crime Commissioners in England saw just 15% of the population voting.

Voter registration: falling numbers, rising concerns

In 2014, the House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee expressed alarm at declining levels of voter engagement, and was particularly concerned about voter registration:

“Millions of people are missing from the UK’s electoral registers. Many of those who are registered—and in many cases the majority—choose not to participate at elections, be they for the UK Parliament, local government, or the European Parliament. In a modern democracy, it is unacceptable that millions of people who are eligible to vote are missing from electoral registers.”

For some years, concerns have been raised about electoral fraud, leading to calls for changes in voter registration to improve confidence in the electoral register. To address these concerns, in 2014 Individual Electoral Registration (IER) went live in England, Wales and Scotland.

Prior to IER, one person in every household took responsibility for registering everyone else living at that address. Under the new system, every individual applying to register needs to provide “identifying information”, such as a national insurance number, and this must be verified before the application is accepted.

The early impact of IER

Although IER has the potential to make electoral registration more accessible to more people, critics have voiced concerns, claiming that it is too complex and may disenfranchise thousands of voters.

In February 2016, UK government figures showed a 600,000 drop in the number of registered voters over the past year (a fall of 1.4 million names since 2014). Commenting on the figures, Katie Ghose, Chief Executive of the Electoral Reform Society, said:

“The fall in the number of registered voters over the past two years shows the danger of the government’s decision to push through the shift to individual electoral registration a year ahead of schedule, against the advice of the Electoral Commission. With elections all over the country in just three months, far too many people are now in danger of missing out on their most basic civic right.”

Meanwhile, the National Records of Scotland reported that the number of people registered to vote in elections in Scotland had fallen by around 100,000 (2.5%) compared to March 2, 2015. The reductions are the first for more than a decade and much bigger than previous movements in the figures, but they echo a similar decline in Northern Ireland when IER was introduced in 2002.

Inequalities in registration

Many of those contributing to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee’s investigation argued that the biggest issue for voter engagement was not low levels of voter registration in the general population, but specifically among certain demographic groups, notably:

  • students and younger people (under 35)
  • people living in the private rented sector
  • certain Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) groups
  • people with disabilities
  • British citizens living abroad
  • Commonwealth and EU citizens
  • those classified as social grade DE (working class / non-working)

The Committee published recommendations aimed at raising the levels of registration and reducing inequalities:

  • make registration automatic
  • prompt people to register to vote when they access other public services (such as registering to pay council tax, or applying for a passport)
  • allow students to register at schools and colleges.
  • let people register to vote closer to the date of an election (rather than the current limit of 11 days before polling day)

Automatic voter registration: an international perspective

In the United States, declining voter registration and turnout rates have been causing similar concerns to those raised in the UK, and some states have been looking at automatic registration of voters.

In 2015, Oregon and California became the first US states to automatically register any citizen with a driving licence. Not everyone agrees with the change, with some legislators claiming that it replaces “individual convenience with government coercion”.

There’s no suggestion that compulsory registration in US states will lead to mandatory voting. But in Australia it is compulsory for citizens both to enrol and to vote in national, state and local elections. Penalties for not complying can include fines and prison sentences.  As a result, turnout figures for federal elections since 1946 have averaged 94%. Australia is one of 23 countries with some form of compulsory registration and /or voting, including France and Sweden (both of which have relatively high election turnout figures).

A work in progress

A notable exception to the trend in declining voting figures in the UK was the Scottish independence referendum of 2014, which saw a historic turnout of 84.6%. However, a post-referendum survey found that, although 16- and 17- year olds were eligible to vote for the first time, turnout among younger people was markedly lower than for those aged 35 and over.

There appears to be no quick fix to address voter engagement in terms of registration rates, inequalities of registration and declining turnout figures. But, as the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee noted, democracy is a work in progress:

“…substantial cultural and structural changes are necessary to convince the public that registering to vote and participating at other elections is worthwhile. This work must go hand in hand with renewing the public’s faith in the UK’s political institutions. This is a task that requires the support of political parties, individual politicians, electoral administrators and the Government.”

If you enjoyed this article, read our previous posts on democracy and voting:

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5 things we’ve learnt from Scotland’s indyref

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SG referendum date announcement

Image from Flickr user Scottishgovernment via a Creative Commons license

By Stephen Lochore and Morwen Johnson

As the consequences of Thursday’s referendum result continue to reverberate across the UK, we look at what the indyref tells us about political engagement and public policy in 2014.

  1. The public will vote, when they feel the issue is important and affects them

The indyref voter turnout of 84.5% was a record high. And this was based on over 97% of the eligible population registering to vote. This contrasts with turnout at other referenda, general elections and particularly local government and European parliamentary elections.

Turnout for the Scottish parliamentary elections of 2011 was just 50.4%. In the UK, in the 2010 general election it was 65.1%. The Scottish devolution referendum in 1997 (which provided the yes vote which created the Scottish parliament) had a turnout of 60.4%; the Welsh devolution referendum the same year had a turnout of 50.1%.

At local level, turnout is even lower. The 2012 Scottish local elections had a turnout of 39.1%; the turnout for the English local and mayoral elections in May 2014 was estimated to be around 35.3% (with the 2014 European Parliament election being held on the same day).

New initiatives such as the 41 Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) elected across England and Wales in November 2012 have failed to engage public interest, at least at the ballot box. Turnout was below 20% in most areas – with an average turnout of 15.1%. This despite the fact that the PCCs are responsible for a combined budget of £8bn, and were set up specifically to hold Chief Constables and police forces to account to communities.

Many people have said that they cast a vote in the indyref ‘because they felt it would mean something’ and it was to be expected that more people would vote in a referendum with significant implications and a clearly discernible difference between the two sides. But it’s quite depressing that in elections for political administrations which control the delivery of local services, the perception of representation and accountability seems to have been lost.

The question for political parties, public servants and policymakers is how to communicate about policy choices in a transparent and accessible way, and embed public engagement in day-to-day processes. And that is more difficult to do than when its about campaigning for support for a Yes/No vote on one question.

  1. Young people are capable of exercising their franchise

For the indyref, 16 and 17 year olds had the vote extended to them for the first time. Many campaigners, on both sides of the indyref debate, claimed that voters should consider the potential impact of the decision on future generations.

Across Scotland, there were 109,533 people on the young voters’ register, according to official figures issued on 19 September. This represents just under 90% of 16 and 17-year-olds estimated to be eligible. Issues that were reported of high interest to young voters included tuition fees, but perhaps surprisingly also welfare and pensions.

The Electoral Reform Society has pointed out that young people receive citizenship education at school but face a delay before they can put their knowledge about democracy and rights into practice. The 2006 Power Inquiry emphasised the need to include young people in the political process as early as possible in order to create a basis for greater political engagement in later life.

The question about voting age often hinges on the argument that younger people are not mature enough to think through voting decisions. Engagement in schools during the indyref suggests that this isn’t the case. Campaigners also thought it important due to the perceived potential impact of differences in voting choices by age. This research suggests older people would be more likely to vote No – and the Ashcroft Poll of 3000 people on the night of the referendum showed nearly three quarters (73%) of those aged 65 or over voted No.

Perhaps the indyref can set the precedent for lowering the voting age … with the next reform being votes for prisoners?

  1. Grassroots campaigning and social media brought the debate into the public consciousness

With an office in the centre of Glasgow, we experienced first-hand the very visible campaigning from grass-roots supporters. You may have also noticed that, although we’re focused on knowledge sharing of public and social policy, we didn’t blog on the referendum – there being good, balanced sources already out there such as the ESRC’s Future of Scotland and the UK site.

It’s been clear that there’s been huge interest in the indyref. According to research from the University of Strathclyde, the referendum inspired more than 10m ‘interactions’ on Facebook over a five week period – one of the highest levels of activity that the monitoring company had ever recorded. These types of interactions include comments, campaign group activity and sharing videos and images relating to the referendum.

Although there is the potential for engagement with the referendum to translate into ongoing engagement in local politics or with public policy, there’s probably a larger risk of disillusionment. How will organisations and grassroot movements calling for change sustain momentum after the No decision?

  1. Democracy will always leave some people’s views unrepresented

There was a lot of angst, as the referendum date grew closer and the polls tighter, about the fact that just a one vote majority would be enough to win. Within our first-past-the post electoral system, sometimes described as ‘winner takes all’, it is often the case that the governing party or parties do not have a mandate from the majority of the population. In fact, at UK (Westminster) parliamentary level, no single party after WW2 has won over half the popular vote.

The binary nature of the indyref increased the proportion of voters on the losing side – though conversely, a greater number of options would reduce the mandate of the winning option.

The No campaign might argue that part of democracy is accepting the will of the majority – including at UK level. The Yes campaign alleged that UK politics and governance has systematically failed to respond to the needs of the Scottish people, although we would highlight the fact that people’s needs are rarely homogenous across Scotland, the UK or indeed in any locality.

  1. Evidence is always context-specific and open to interpretation

For any undecided voter, the big decision in the indyref was who to believe. Our team of researchers here at the Knowledge Exchange were sourcing material every day purporting to be ‘evidence- based’ and it was a good reminder that research is rarely impartial. From the design or framing of research questions, to the interpretation put on results, there are numerous opportunities for bias to be introduced. How findings were reported in the media was also a big issue throughout the indyref.

This was exemplified by differing forecasts of the economic strength of an independent Scotland, reflecting different assumptions about key factors such as the future price of oil and the extent of accessible reserves, the transfer of a share of UK debt to Scotland and trends in business investment. One downside of the No vote is that we’ll be deprived of seeing who was proved right!

Concluding thoughts

Society is sometimes characterised as politically apathetic, but the Scottish referendum emphatically refutes that. A simplistic assumption is that people are fed up with politicians and the increasingly similar manifestos of mainstream political parties. A more nuanced conclusion is that campaign-based politics, which encourages people to express their support for a cause or issue, and then allows them to become as active or inactive as they prefer, is a more natural fit to the networked and fractured manner in which people increasingly communicate both at work and in their personal lives.

Indyref witnessed a proliferation of grass-roots groups, particularly among those favouring independence, often organised through social media, for example the Facebook group Scottish Pensioners for Independence. Or the contrasting women together and women for independence networks. The challenge for governments across advanced democracies is how to develop and deploy the interactive tools, digital knowledge and responsive legislative and civic processes needed to tap into informal, fragmented and often transient group activity, while avoiding the danger of only listening to those who network the loudest.