My colleague, Baroness O’Cathain, has just returned from observing elections in Azerbaijan. She was conscious that the security of voting was better than in the UK. However, what struck her especially was the fact the election day was a national holiday. That prompts the question: is that something we should be contemplating?
I know that studies have shown that many of the mechanisms suggested for enhancing voter turnout (telephone voting etc) are likely to have little impact. Surveys of non-voters have found that the inconvenience of voting is not a particularly significant reason for them not voting. Making the day of the general election a national holiday would have a signficant cost for industry. One could also argue that weeekend voting would be just as convenient for electors as a holiday on a Thursday. However, a dedicated holiday would make it more obvious it was election day.
Is it worth considering? I would certainly regard it as preferable to compulsory voting. (I know the two are not mutually exclusive.) And it would probably make people more well disposed towards a general election!
It sounds like a prudent set of ideas. I guess it depends on the national holiday, too. We have surprisingly few ‘national’ holidays which are actually commemorated!
I certainly agree with weekend voting. I sympathise with a lot of people who can’t get to the booth until after work, by which time they have also done the commute home and are too exhausted to go out to vote, or have to attend to household chores.
Strictly speaking, there is no limit to the day of an election, is there? It’s only fallen on Thursdays in May by quite a recent convention.
So disenchanted are the people just now with politicians that ignore the people that vote (and pay) for them, that if the were to be given a day’s holiday allegedly to vote, they would be far away from the ballot box, probably at the races or sea-side with their families.
If made compulsory, many would probably deliberately place a cross in every ‘slot’.
Postal voting, e-mail voting, telephone voting might encouage “fiddling”.
If people trust their politicians they will turn out to vote. All people want is to be told the truth.
Dear Lord Norton,
I tend to agree with Anne Palmer.
I think if there were a national holiday on election day the beach might indeed be more appealling than the booth!
It might be if there were weekend voting too for surely the pressures on people at weekends to do more important things than vote are even greater than they are on a Thursday.
I would, therefore, be opposed to all, and any, attempts to change the way we currently run elections and the day on which we run them; particularly as I am not sure the extent of turn-out at elections actually matters provided people accept as legitimate the outcomes of those elections.
As for compulsory voting, no, no, no to paraphrase Lady Thatcher. If ‘forced’ to vote, I would certainly spoil the ballot paper unless there was a box on it marked ‘Abstention’.
Howridiculous.
Adrian Kidney: You are quite right. It is by convention that general elections are held on a Thursday. It was only early in the twentieth century that holding the election on a single day became institutionalised (before then, voting was spread over a period of a week or so). There was no statutory provision as to what day of the week the election was to be held. The 1924 general election was held on a Wednesday, for example, and the 1931 general election on a Tuesday. It is only since 1935 that Thursdays have been employed consistently. (Having said, the election was staggered in 1945 to accommodate certain local holiday arrangements.) There was some experimentation with weekend voting in some local elections in 2000: it had no significant impact on turnout.
Anne Palmer: I think you are right about compulsory voting. If it was introduced, there would need to be provision for a ‘none of the above’ option on the ballot paper and it is that which many people would tick if statutorily required to vote.
I have heard the ‘none of the above’ option cited a number of times before, and it sounds a good idea, though it does beg the question of what would happen in the event of None of the Above winning!
I can’t see a way round that without simply repeating the election…
Would there not also be a problem that we don’t actually know when a General Election would happen? Yeah, roughly every four years, but there is nothing saying it could not be shorter than this (or longer I think).
On compulsory voting, what do you think about the following idea? People should have a ‘none of the above’ option, but if it wins then the constituents of that area have no MP. Otherwise the NOTA option just becomes a free hit against politicians – the thoughtless, lazy, ‘they’re all the same’, pub-bore option. If there is the risk that one might lose a local voice in Parliament then there would a price to be paid for voting for none of the above.
Stuart. Do you really think we should have any MP’s at all if the Treaty of Lisbon becomes activated? Why should we need any when the Regional Assemblies , which cost such a lot of money to run, are not doing their full job. It is surely known that the people do not want Regional Assemblies, the people want their local Councils, Parish and County, they do not want Regional Assemblies at all, yet they have been ignored yet again. It is obvious the people simply cannot afford yet another layer of Government, especially now when it is predicted that three million may be out of work by next year. As our Parliament can be overruled or has to work according to the Laws and Institutions of the European Union, we might as well be ruled direct and stop pussy-footing around. It is the Government and Parliamentarians that have already made that choice. If you remember, the people were not asked what they wanted, Parliament decided for us. They sadly, and us will have to live with the consequences of their actions. Get used to it!
Stuart’s response rather anticipates what I was going to say in answer to Adrian Kidney. My understanding is that where such provision is used in some US elections, if there is a majority for ‘none of the above’ then no one is declared elected and there has to be a fresh election.
DW: One of the principal issues would indeed be coping with the short notice. Although we usually have an idea of when the Prime Minister may ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament, there is no certainty. The only statutory constraint is that no Parliament can last beyond five years (it was seven years until the 1911 Parliament Act), and the period between the anouncement of a general election and the holding of that election is a short one. Basically, one has approximately one month. This would certainly create major loigistical problems – while probably giving electors a nice surprise!
I only just discovered this blog as I am starting to do some research on the House of Lords for university – its a great idea!
Coming from Australia I tend to be a supporter of compulsory voting and the idea of having elections at the weekend – although I always like to keep an open mind. In Australia we have elections on Saturdays and voting is compulsory. There is certainly no movement calling for elections to be held during the week. Just today there were several by-elections in New South Wales and a general election in the Australian Capital Territory. (Just as an aside, no elections in Australia use the first-past-the-post system – I would be interested in hearing your views on the FFP system, I am generally quite scathing but as I noted above I am always open to being convinced by a well-balanced argument).
With regard to compulsory voting, here in Australia we do not have a ‘none of the above’ option on ballot papers – if people do not want to vote for any candidate they are free to lodge a blank (or spoilt) paper. It is only compulsory to turn up to vote – no one knows whether you actually vote by completing the ballot paper. Despite this at the Australian national election in 2007 only 4% of ballots were ‘informal’, i.e. incomplete, spoilt, or incorrectly filled out (and voter turnout was almost 95%). This leads to my main point which is that compulsory voting does encourage people who are less likely to vote (the young, very old, people from non-English speaking or disadvantaged backgrounds, people living in remote areas, etc) which I think is a positive thing. While people are not forced to complete a ballot I think the overwhelming view among Australians is that if we have to turn up at the polling place we might as well lodge a valid vote.
What’s so wrong with a chunk of the electorate not voting? If, say, a third of the electorate genuinely don’t care who wins, why should they be forced to vote? Would forcing them to vote make them listen to the candidates and parties and quietly weigh up the different policies, or would they just turn up, put their X in a random box and leave? Maybe forcing them to vote actually distorts results as there would be so many random votes involved.
That’s an interesting point of view, From Australia. I also wanted to ask for Lord Norton’s opinion on proportional representation, as a way to encourage people to vote.
I heard that in countries with proportional representation voter turnout tends to be higher, because no-ones vote is wasted (by ‘wasted’ I mean that anyone who votes for a loser has wasted their vote).
Canada has just had a historic general election for two reasons: lowest voter turnout ever, and highest percentage of the popular vote to a party that has zero seats (~7% to the Green party). This has brought the subject of proportional representation to the fore again.
P.S. Have been trying to get some links to the Lords blog into various news sites, where relevant. It would be good for this site to become even more successful. 🙂
Stuart: I very much agree with the point you make. I think electors should have the freedom not to vote as well as the freedom to vote. It is their choice. I am all for initiatives to educate people as to the importance of voting but I am not a believer in forcing them to vote.
Liam: I am strongly opposed to the introduction of proportional representation for elections to the House of Commons. I authored the pamphlet (‘Power to the People’) published in 1998 in response to the Jenkins’ Commission recommendations for the AV+ electoral system. The pamphlet detailed the arguments for the existing electoral system. PR would undermine the fundamental benefit of our existing system (accountability) and would not deliver the benefits claimed for it. Take the argument about ‘wasted votes’. There is a PR system for elections to the Scottish Parliament. What does Scotland presently have? A minority SNP administration. In terms of electing the government (which is what really matters), most votes in last year’s Scottish elelection were wasted. What do we have in Wales? A Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition. Hwo many electors voted definitively for a Lab-PC coalition in last year’s Welsh elections? Not one. Incidentally, it is important to remember that PR is not a particular electoral system. It is a generic term for a large number of systems (AMS, STV, list etc) each of which has its own demerits.
Thanks for your postscript, which is greatly appreciated. We would be delighted to see the site get greater coverage.
Excellent, I’ve been looking for an opposing opinion on the matter.
I did have a look for that pamphlet, it’s mentioned a few times around the Web, unfortunately there’s no download. If you have an electronic version to hand, I’d like to see it. 🙂
Is that because power is necessarily split across a number of parties, so there is no core accountability?
Is that a bad thing though? Compromise is part of life, and proportional representation reflects that. Isn’t a coalition more representative of the voters’ will, than a party that won a greater number of seats because they pipped another party to the post in a few constituencies?
The things I particularly dislike about first past the post are vote splitting, and tactical voting. These two things undermine accountability, in my opinion, as the voting populace are unable to effect real change.
Agreed. All the PR systems I’ve read-up on have seemed like rather over-complicated kludges.
I have an inkling that proportional representation would only work if used in reform taken from first principles of the government.
For example: the only way I can think of making PR work simply is by mapping percentage of vote onto time spent in Parliament. So, if a session of Parliament lasted 100 days and candidate X recieved 20% of the vote. Candidate X would be allowed to spend 20 days in Parliament, attending debates, committees, meetings and so-on. It’s not a bad system necessarily, but requires an utterly different approach to how our government would work. Does this make sense?
I think a half day national holiday would be the best way at elections. This would mean industry would not suffer too much and the public would hopefully use the time to vote.
I think it is worth considering. Elections are only every four years or so, and it would give a strong endorsement of the value we place on democracy.
Of course, It might mean that ‘snap’ General Elections are ruled out, as it might be prudent to give the nation’s business 6 weeks notice of such a ‘day off’.
But in the 24/7 culture of business we now live in, I’m afraid I can’t see the CBI and other organisations really putting their weight behind it.
The idea of a ‘half-day’ might be more feasible in the short-term.
But the increase in postal voting was meant to address some of these issues anyway – so if turnout hasn’t increased, maybe that points to the problem being elsewhere ?
On a final note, the ‘holiday’ might have more support if we had ‘fixed term Parliaments’ as the date would be known well in advance – but that is another matter entirely, and not one I can see being adopted as whichever Government is in power will not want to give it up..
Liam: Accountability exists because you have one body – the party in government – that is responsible for public policy and can then be held to account at the next election. Election day, in Karl Popper’s words, is ‘judgement day’. One cannot deny responsibility. Where you have different parties forming a coaltion but fighting the next election as single entities, there is no one body that can be held accountable for public policy. On the Welsh coalition, is it a bad thing? It is in terms of the arguments advanced for PR, namely that every vote counts. In this instance, not a single vote counted, because no elector got the government that they voted for. It is not ‘representative’ at all and, as we may see at the next Welsh Assembly election, not necessarily accountable as an administration. You cannot get vote splitting with first-past-the-post, at least not in a single election and the system can make more of a difference than under PR, where often the same parties do post-election deals and stay in office. I understand your solution: selling it to politicians may be another matter entirely!
NHackett and Bedd Gelert: a very interesting idea. I take the point about it being every four/five years, so the strain would not be that great. Postal voting makes voting easier but introduces major problems of security and, in some people’s eyes, downgrades the significance of voting as a civic exercise. A public holiday may encourage voting while raising the significance of the exercise.
Thank you for the explanation, Lord Norton. You make good points (perhaps you might like to write them up in a blog post one day).
As for vote splitting not being possible, maybe we’re talking about different things. What I mean is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_splitting Where an imbalance in the number of parties on one side of the political spectrum means a party on the other side of the spectrum is elected.
Quite. Can’t see this working without a fundamentally different political system in place.