This is the longer version of an article which was recently published in the 'Church Times'.

Constitutional Reform – Top Priority
by Colin Buchanan,previously Bishop of Woolwich and for 29 years on General Synod.

It seems an age since the Archbishops very properly called upon us not to vote for the BNP in the European elections. Beyond that, all they could do was to urge us to vote and to vote responsibly. But since that call, the expenses drama has worsened, the cabinet has fallen apart and been cobbled together again, the government has virtually imploded, and cries have gone up for not just change in rules about expenses, but for the Prime Minister to step down, for an immediate General Election, yes, and for constitutional reform. These in turn have been overtaken by the European election results, and this week various minorities have been revelling in the support they have won under the party list system – but the outstanding winner has been the non-voter. Yet whether in weeks or in month, that General Election is coming.

Christian leaders cannot enjoy simply urging people to vote and vote well. We sound vaguer than the politicians, as though wringing our hands on the touchline without even knowing whom to support. Yet we are absolutely committed to involvement in the political process; we do not believe that the Christian faith can be immured in some private pietistic locker away from how men and women are to live and to be governed in society, and we retain high ideals of honesty, justice and the support of the weak in society. We long to touch society. And yet preachers and writers still have to reflect ‘Can we do anything better than to urge “vote responsibly”? Is that the limit of our prophetic function?’

And the simple truth is: we have to hand a programme backed by experience, and suddenly an opening has been given it. Alan Johnson triggered this in recent public debate – and everyone now is having define how they relate to it. I refer, of course, to constitutional reform. The Church of England has regularly taken our stand for justice in representation, as the means to a truly participatory democracy. In February 2003 General Synod passed by 226 vote 6 a motion which, along with some blandness, included:
‘[We’ call upon Her Majesty’s Government and leaders of the main political parties... to encourage and enable, by legislative and administrative action, and especially by introducing proportional representation by the single transferable vote for elections to Parliament, all members of our society to play a full part in our democracy...’

This is a sharp-edged call for a very specific change in public life. This was no groping around in despair for something positive to say – it was the central body of the Church of England speaking out of its own long experience of the justice of using the single transferable vote (STV) in multi-member constituencies. Our Synod is elected that way (it began with the old Church Assembly back in 1920); the boards and committees of Synod are elected that way. The Crown Nominations Commission, in both its national and its diocesan membership, is elected that way. Those who ever have cast their votes this way know from experience that voting ‘1,2,3,4,5’ by preferences gives an accurate expression of the electorate’s wishes. This is quite unlike the ‘first-past-the-post’ of Parliamentary elections where the crude ‘x’ means the voter has to be totally in favour of one candidate and totally opposed to all the others. In an Anglican church which has seen many splits of style, opinion and even theology, this fair system has preserved the true proportions of the voters at each level of the synods, and – as accords with our own theology of the church – minorities have never been swamped out of existence by over-weening majorities; at the same time voters have been able to express preferences as between individual candidates of similar views, and have influenced the results accordingly. The persons elected are the ones the electors most wanted, and no serious complaints ever arise. Who can say the same for parliamentary or local council elections? Dis-proportional representation is mis-representation.

There is a deeply moral factor in all this. Christians do not believe in subordinating the means to the end. STV is far and away the best way of getting fair means, which in turn entails a fair result.

The secular world has however steadily been catching up with us – and not just in the Student Unions and Trades Unions which are used to fair voting. In the 35 years that STV has been used in Northern Ireland (for every kind of election save that to the Westminster parliament) the system has produced a fair result. For, whereas the minority community there knew until 1974 that they would always be swamped out of any meaningful representation, since 1974, even while bombs exploded, amid all the accompanying recriminations, we have heard not a single voice to complain that this or that party was not properly represented. And, with even less trumpeting in England, the use of STV in Scottish council elections in 2007 has broken the previous stranglehold of one party upon more half of the local councils, and all over Scotland has led to differing health-giving kinds of new sharing agreements between parties.

Oh, and please don’t take that eyewash about needing ‘first past the post’ to get ‘strong government’ which, even if plausible, is a naked preferring the result to the means. And it is not plausible: in the first place, all the signs are that first past the post will produce a randomly unrepresentative assembly – whether one with a ludicrously large majority of one party or one without an overall majority at all. In the second place, there have already been six virtually ‘hung’ Parliaments elected under first past the post in the last 16 elections (and look at the likelihoods now). In the third place we do not necessarily benefit from an unchecked rampant ‘strong government’ (and how much less if they were unfairly elected by a minority of the voters). And in the fourth place, it is difficult to believe the two main parties believe it themselves, for when in opposition they do their best to weaken the government, and indeed revel in the rare occasion they can beat them.. All they mean is ‘strong government by us’.

A call is going up for a referendum on constitutional reform (once promised but never delivered by the Blair government) – and Alan Johnson, who endorsed it, built in the idea of doing it in conjunction with the General Election. So Christians should surely join the call for that referendum – and add in that it is STV on which we need to decide? Are you writing to your MP? The last service the present discredited administration can do for us is to arrange for that referendum to come the same day as the next election, and then go to the country. A Parliament thus newly elected under the existing system would then be chartered by the referendum to reform the electoral system and go back to the country for fair elections. At every point we ought to promote fair voting, call for reform to establish it, and back every move, every initiative, which will bring on the referendum. We may well be at a hinge-point of constitutional history.
Bishop Colin Buchanan, previously Bishop of Woolwich and for 29 years on General Synod, is the Honorary President of the Electoral Reform Society.

I vote for the old-fashioned way of balloting in elections by Michael Cross The Guardian, Thursday November 13 2008
One of the dafter ideas to become conventional wisdom during the first dotcom bubble was that our political system suffered some flaw that would be curable by letting people vote from their desktops or mobiles. Amazingly, this still seems to be official policy. Michael Wills, the minister charged with constitutional reform, conceded to Parliament last month that no new pilots of e-voting are planned. However, further work on e-voting "will be funded as necessary". He said the government is still "taking stock" of previous local pilots. It would be braver, and more realistic, to admit that the whole idea of remote e-voting is dead. While there are a million ways in which the web and other new digital media could enhance representative democracy, e-voting in elections is not one of them. The potential dangers, ranging from coercion to electronic sabotage, are simply too great to risk in exchange for the unproven benefits of a cosmetic modernisation. The UK wouldn't be the first country to take this step. The Netherlands, which in 2004 and 2006 enthusiastically promoted e-voting for overseas voters as a step towards an all-electronic election, will next year revert to paper ballots. The U-turn followed a successful campaign by a group opposed to all electronic polling machines: its tactics included buying a couple of machines to crack their software. Leontine Loeber, of the Dutch Electoral Council, told this summer's European Electronic Voting conference in Austria that it is a mistake to treat voting as just another transaction that can be computerised in the quest for efficiency and modernity. Unlike banking, in elections every voter must in principle be able to verify that the system works correctly. And unlike banking, a voting system cannot tolerate an occasional error once in a while. A bank can refund victims of errors; a government cannot refund votes. A few such errors, and trust in the whole institution is gone. Ask Al Gore. Worryingly, the conference heard that the UK is actually top of 31 countries in an international index of "e-voting readiness". In such measures as political and legal context, state of e-government infrastructure and e-voting experience, the UK came out ahead of the US, other large European countries and even the e-obsessed Estonia. "The legal context of Great Britian shows an excellent environment for e-voting," the authors conclude. Whether that accolade will embolden ministers to revive e-voting remains to be seen. It is more likely that instinctive political caution will kick in. Ministers know that electoral glitches to do with IT will attract far, far more publicity than paper ballots being mislaid on their way to the count. Even technophile Finland had a taste of that the other week, when 232 votes out of 12,000 cast in a trial of electronic voting went adrift. The justice ministry blamed voters for failing to press the "OK" button as instructed; their British counterparts would be unwise to try the same tactic. Fair enough, e-voting enthusiasts will say, but didn't a certain superpower hold a presidential election last week? And didn't certain prophecies of disaster with new voting computers turn out to be unfounded? That may well be true: Homer Simpson's experience aside (you'll find the clip all over the web), computerised polling machines introduced after the 2000 Florida fiasco seem to have performed relatively well. Certainly there was "no massive systemic meltdown", in the words of Computerworld newspaper. But we are not talking about remote e-voting here. The new machines were in existing polling places, so were partly protected from electronic sabotage and users were not vulnerable to coercion. And all that was necessary to be judged a success was to do a better job than the wheezy hole-punchers that brought the US electoral system into ridicule in the past. The US election had another lesson for the e-voting movement. In the UK, the idea gained traction in the first place because of politicians' fears about what they saw as irreversibly declining turnouts in all advanced countries. I have argued before that the way to tackle decline is to follow Australia, Belgium and Brazil and make voting mandatory. But last week, Americans showed that, if you give the electorate something important to vote on, it will turn out - regardless of technological bells and whistles. And it's perhaps a bit patronising for ministers here to suggest otherwise

LGA report
GLA Report on Postal Voting
Electoral offences in London following the local elections of May 2006
Report: 14
Date: 26 October 2006
By: Assistant Commissioner Specialist Operations on behalf of the
Commissioner Summary

Around 30 offences arising from the local elections of May 2006 have
been or are under investigation by SO12 (Special Branch), now SO15
(CTC).This excludes an extensive investigation currently under way in
the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, where a range of offences, mainly
relating to postal voting, are under investigation. This will be a
protracted inquiry.Postal voting on demand remains a serious area of
vulnerability where the integrity of the electoral process is
concerned. New legislation will address, but not eliminate this
problem.

A. Recommendation
That the report be noted.

B. Supporting information

1. This report updates the Authority on the current position in
relation to electoral offences in the Metropolitan Police District
(MPD), following the local elections of May 2006. This reports seeks
to address the scale and location of such offences, the types of
offences under investigation and also some common features and
particular issues relating to electoral offences.

2. Within the MPS, election offences (often referred to as electoral
fraud), are investigated by the Special Prosecutions Unit (SPU) of the
Counter Terrorism Command (CTC - SO15), as such investigations were
previously the remit of SO12 (Special Branch). In relation to the
local elections of 4 May 2006, around 30 separate investigations have
taken, or are currently taking place. The scale of these
investigations differs enormously, from simple allegations involving
technical breaches of election law through to a major investigation
currently underway in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, where a
wide range of apparent fraudulent activity is being investigated. The
complexity of these investigations makes it difficult to be precise in
counting the number of individual offences involved. A number of these
investigations have already concluded, whereas some allegations may be
the subject of criminal charges, following directions from the Crown
Prosecution Service.

3. Prior to the May 2006 elections, officers from the SPU visited
appropriate figures in all major parties to brief them about our
response to allegations of electoral offences, and to offer advice on
any issues they wished to raise. Additionally, early contact was made
with council electoral services managers and with the Association of
Electoral Administrators (London Branch). Briefing material was made
available to uniformed response officers and other relevant parts of
the MPS, and information about electoral offences was broadcast via
the MPS intranet. This activity meant that parties, councils and
police officers had a ‘single point of contact’ from which they could
seek help and advice on election-related offences. The Representation
of the People Act 1983 places a duty on the Director of Public
Prosecutions (DPP) to “…make such inquiries and institute such
prosecutions as the circumstances appear…” [1]. In practice, this
means that the SPU refer any allegations of electoral offences to the
Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) (who discharge this duty on behalf of
the DPP) at a very early stage in the investigation, and continue to
liaise closely with the CPS throughout the investigation. The SPU has
an excellent relationship with the relevant CPS department and this
has led to the swift resolution of a number of alleged offences.

4. Election offences have been alleged across a range of London
Boroughs, and there is no particular pattern to the spread of these
offences. Similarly, offences under investigation involve the full
range of political parties, and include sitting councillors,
candidates, elections agents, canvassers and party activists. Offences
reported include falsification of nomination papers, impersonation,
making false statements about candidates, undue influence on voters,
failing to include an ‘imprint’ on election publicity material and
non-submission of expenses.

5. One area that has caused, and continues to cause, a great deal of
concern is the spread of postal voting on demand. The process of
postal voting removes some of the safeguards that come with the
traditional method of casting a vote at a polling station, primarily
the secrecy of the ballot. There are a number of ways that the postal
voting system can be abused, and such abuse can amount to criminal
offences of forgery, deception and conspiracy to defraud. The SPU has
also seen evidence of a range of questionable practices which call
into question the integrity of the postal voting system, but would not
amount to criminal offences in their own right. Such activity could be
termed ‘sharp practice’. A ‘Code of Conduct’ [2] was prepared jointly
by the Electoral Commission and the main political parties, to deal
with handling of applications to vote by post and also the handling of
postal ballots. It gives clear advice on what is and what is not
considered acceptable practice. The ‘Code of Conduct’ has no force in
law and the SPU has seen evidence of the Code being ignored by
candidates and their supporters.

6. The SPU has received a large number of allegations regarding postal
voting irregularities in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets (LBTH).
These allegations have received a considerable amount of local and
national press coverage. A number of allegations relating to electoral
offences in LBTH were made during the General Election of 2005 (which
were the subject of scrutiny by the Greater London Assembly [3]), but
there was not sufficient evidence to bring a prosecution. It was not
surprising that similar allegations were made this year. Indeed, this
was anticipated in a letter from the MPS to the Chairman of the
Election Review Committee. LBTH Council informed the SPU at an early
stage that they believed that suspicious activity was occurring in
relation to postal vote applications, and liaison with the electoral
services department took place immediately. The scale and range of the
offences alleged meant that a separate investigative team was set up
to deal solely with these allegations, and it will continue to work on
these matters for the foreseeable future. The nature of the alleged
offences being dealt with in LBTH include the fraudulent multiple
redirection of postal votes, apparent clusters of disenfranchisement,
postal ballot papers being received by those who have not applied for
them, postal votes applied for and subsequently not received and
various allegations of third parties filling in postal vote
application forms and postal ballot papers. This list is by no means
exhaustive. It is not possible to go into more detail here as this may
compromise ongoing lines of enquiry. This will be a protracted
investigation.

7. It is the view of the SPU that widespread use of postal votes has
opened up a whole new area to be exploited by the fraudster, and the
opportunity has been taken. It is difficult to assess if abuse of
postal voting has altered the outcome of local elections, but it is
possible. It is the view of the SPU that the postal voting system must
be properly managed and scrutinised, otherwise the integrity of the
electoral system will be compromised. Previously, council electoral
services whilst being responsible for the administration of elections,
did not have a clear remit, or the resources, to effectively
scrutinise the postal voting system. Nor was there a requirement for
postal vote applicants to provide enough information on the
application form to allow effective scrutiny. This will change under
the Electoral Administration Act 2006, parts of which are already in
force.

8. The Electoral Administration Act 2006 has introduced new criminal
offences of furnishing false information, or failing to supply
information to an electoral registration officer, and also an offence
of making a false application to vote by post or by proxy. The Act
also places a duty on electoral registration officers to take
necessary steps to produce a complete and accurate electoral register.
This will require some degree of scrutiny of postal vote applications
on the part of local councils. Additionally, the Act requires that all
new applicants for postal votes provide their date of birth as well as
their signature in a specified manner (i.e. in a way that can be
digitally recorded). These changes should make the detection and
prosecution of electoral fraud somewhat easier, and will also have a
deterrent value. The Electoral Commission continues to press for
further legislative changes (e.g. individual electoral registration,
rather than household registration) that should reduce the risk of
electoral fraud even further. Officers from the SPU have previously
given evidence to a Commons Select Committee on electoral fraud
matters, and will continue to support the Electoral Commission in
their efforts to promote confidence in and increase the integrity of
the electoral system.

C. Race and equality impact

1. It is believed that communities where English is a second language
are vulnerable to being disenfranchised or otherwise subjected to
‘sharp practice’ where postal votes are concerned. This is because
postal voting application forms can appear complex and can result in
assistance being sought to complete such forms. This leads to third
parties being given an opportunity to apply for postal ballots where
this is not the preference of the voter, to re-direct postal ballot
forms, or even for postal ballot papers to be handed over to third
parties. There is evidence that such activity has occurred within the
Bengali community in Tower Hamlets.

2. Electoral law requires that formal documents used in elections are
produced solely in English and Welsh. It is understood that some
‘supplementary’ material is produced in other languages, but it may be
that more work could be done to ensure that those who do not have
English as a first language understand their right to vote in the way
that they prefer, and that they have a right to cast their vote,
postal or otherwise, in secret.

3. Anecdotally, some community contacts have remarked on how some
practices that are seen as acceptable outside the UK have been adopted
in respect of UK elections – for example, the head of an extended
family instructing family members to vote for a particular party or
candidate. Postal voting increases this risk, as the safeguard of a
truly secret ballot is removed.

D. Financial implications
There are no known financial implications.

E. Background papers
None

F. Contact details
Report author: Special Prosecutions Unit SO15 Counter Terrorism
Command, MPS