SOLACE CONFERENCE CASE STUDY: PAPERWORK
You are the new Chief Executive, Returning Officer and Electoral Registration Officer at Anywhere
Borough Council (ABC). The Council has “annual “elections, electing by thirds, it has 45 members and
for many years has been a “single party state”. Recently however, there has been a rise in
“independent” Councillors and following the EU referendum, a number of members have “walked the
floor”.
As a result you have a new administration (a loosely formed independent group) and a new leader.
Your council which has been very stable and rather apolitical for a long time is experiencing a new
style of politics, sometimes robust, sometimes confrontational and not always easy to “manage”. Your
colleague officers at ABC are sometimes struggling with this significant change in culture and
behaviour. You had local council elections this May and there were a number of issues.
On all points, do you agree with the ROs decision and if not, why not. Was there anything that could
or should have been done to avoid / mitigate, or was there anything in the planning / lead up to the
election that the RO and their team could / should have done.
1. In the period leading up to polling day, you were advised that a number of returned postal
ballot papers had been torn along the fold line by voters between the Postal Vote Statement
and the ballot paper, instead of the along the perforated line. This tear caused the removal of
the official mark. You considered the issue and decided that meant that you could not include
the affected ballot papers in the count. This error occurred due to the design of the postal
ballot packs. A similar error occurred the year before.
2. A week prior to polling day you were advised that Anywhere Town Primary School which was
a double polling station and had been used for a number of years was closed for works and
the temporary school facilities were not appropriately placed within the polling district to
service the electorate. New premises were sought in Anywhere Town and arrangements were
made to use the Church (which was actually located on the same street as the school) and the
Community Room which was situated further down in the town. Unfortunately, rather than
allocating streets to the new stations reflective of their new locations, the old “split” was used.
This meant that stations, elector allocations, staffing structures etc were copied over from the
previous arrangement at the school. The poll card data was produced on this basis. The error
in the allocation of these two polling stations was not brought to your attention by an elector
but by a councillor on the day before poling day. You decided that it was then too late to make
any amendments to the allocation as registers for polling stations were printed and with
Presiding Officers and you did not have the time and opportunity to be able to make changes
and inform the electors. People did have to walk further to another station because of the
error – however, the distance was only that which they had previously travelled to when their
original station had been located in the old school premises.
3. On polling day, you were advised that there were serious problems due to incomplete
registers of electors having been provided to all polling stations. As a result, when polling
stations opened on polling day, the vast majority of the eligible electors’ names were not
included on the polling station registers and were therefore unable to be issued with a ballot
paper. The problem became immediately apparent on the opening of polls and within an hour
was being widely reported throughout the national media. You agreed that new registers
should be printed and despatched immediately to all polling stations. You mobilised staff and
resources from across the Council and this was done and all polling stations had full and
complete copies of the register of electors by 10:30am on polling day. The error that occurred
had its cause in simple human error but had enormous consequences for those affected.
Materials for polling stations, including the registers of electors used to mark off names of
eligible electors who had voted, had been prepared for distribution to Presiding Officers on
the day before polling day. In printing the registers, a software option not to include ordinary
or standard electors when choosing printing options for the polling station copy was chosen.
The registers therefore only contained categories of elector such as those newly added to the
register, postal and proxy voters, young voters and other special category electors. The error
was compounded by inadequate checking processes of printed registers within the electoral
services office before they were placed into ballot boxes, together with a change of location
for distributing ballot boxes which meant that there was insufficient space for Presiding
Officers to fully check the contents of ballot boxes themselves before taking them away. One
Presiding Officer did look at his copy of the register and report his concerns on the evening
before polling day but this concern was not sufficiently addressed or escalated until
immediately before polling stations opened on polling day, by which time it was too late to
take any remedial action to check the registers for all of the other polling stations. You were
asked (required) to keep polling stations open later but declined.
4. Later on polling day you were advised that ballot books for two wards were mixed up at 9
polling stations resulting in incorrect ballot papers being issued to electors. This occurred
because the cover of each book was correct but the ballot papers inside did not correspond
to the cover. As soon as this was noticed you took the following steps to rectify the situation:
a. The incorrect covers were removed and correct books were immediately distributed
to the right stations
b. Steps were taken to identify those voters who had been given the wrong ballot paper
and Council staff were dispatched to contact the voters concerned by personally
visiting their properties and inviting them back to vote using the correct ballot paper
c. If contact was not able to be made an explanatory note was put through their door
d. You maintained a clear and concise audit trail of the actions taken and reasoning
behind decisions made
e. You communicated with candidates and agents to ensure they’re aware of the issue
and know what you will be doing in response.
f. You ensured that the POs in stations affected should record their actions and attach
this to the ballot paper account
g. You decided that the verification should continue as normal and the invalid papers be
included in the verification figure
h. The invalid papers would then be extracted at the count stage and separated into an
envelope making sure to be transparent
i. As RO, you would be prepared to answer queries from affected voters, candidates and
agents and the press (you made arrangements to talk to them).