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Implementing Elections in New Times: Explaining the Rise of Electoral Maladministration in Established
Democracies1
Abstract
The integrity of the administration of elections has been questioned in many established democracies such as Britain following high profile cases of electoral maladministration. Studies from public administration have found that policies often fail at the implementation stage of the policy process but these sources of failure have not been systematically examined in previous studies on election administration. This article explores the challenges that UK electoral administrators face in the implementation of elections through extensive primary interviews. It finds that there are historically new challenges arising from broader socio-economic, technological and political changes occurring in post-industrial, digital-era democracies which long established methods of conducting elections are less equipped for. Recent concerns in Britain about the integrity of elections are therefore argued to derive from institutional drift.
Paper for the 63rd Political Studies Association Annual International Conference, 25 - 27 March 2013, City Hall Cardiff Dr. Toby S. James School of Political, Social and International Studies University of East Anglia Norwich Research Park Norwich NR4 7TJ [email protected] www.tobysjames.com
1 This research was generously funded by Nuffield Foundation (grant: SGS/38910) and the McDougall
Trust.
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At midnight on Friday 7th May, 2010, with the result of the UK general election
unclear, the BBC News carried the headlines that the election had been marred by
widespread administration errors with election administration. For example, 600
voters in Chester were unable to cast a ballot because of an out of date electoral
register. In Sheffield and Leeds long queues formed at the close of poll and voters
were turned at away. Some dissatisfied voters staged sit-ins to protest against what
they called "disenfranchisement" (Channel 4 News, 2010). It initially seemed that
Britain was repeating the high-profile cases of administrative breakdowns witnessed
in the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election in Florida but also other established
democracies such as Indonesia in 2009 and India in 2010. These are important
because they can undermine public confidence in the electoral process (Atkeson &
Saunders, 2007; Claassen, Magleby, Monson, & Patterson, 2012; Claassen, Magleby,
Monson, & Patterson, 2008; Hall, Quin Monson, & Patterson, 2009).
Understanding the causes, consequences and remedies for defects in the practice of
elections is being subjected to renewed scrutiny (Birch, 2011; Hyde & Marinov, 2012;
Norris, 2012a). This article draws from theories of public administration to identify
why concerns about the integrity of the administration of elections may now been
spreading to established democracies such as Britain. Studies from public
administration have found that policies often fail at the implementation stage of the
policy process but these sources of failure have not been systematically examined in
previous studies on election administration. This article explores the challenges that
electoral administrators face in the implementation of elections through extensive
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primary interviews with the local election officials involved in running elections in
the UK.
The article begins by developing the concept of electoral maladministration as a
comparative concept for understanding problems in the implementation of
elections. Part II details the rise of concerns about electoral maladministration in the
UK. Part III explains the methodology and part IV describes the new challenges
identified from the interviews. Part V makes the claim that there are new challenges
arising from broader socio-economic, technological and political changes occurring in
post-industrial, digital-era democracies. Elections in established democracies are
now being implemented in qualitatively different environment: one characterised as
post-industrial, digital-era governance. However, the procedures used to administer
elections have remained unchanged in the UK for some time. Electoral
maladministration has therefore often arisen from institutional drift. The
implications are considered and a new research agenda identified.
Conceptualising electoral maladministration
Beetham defines democracy as a system of rule that ‘embraces the concepts of
popular control and political equality’ (Beetham, 1994: 28). Elections should,
amongst other things, provide fairness amongst parties, candidates and voters.
Democratic audits therefore scrutinise the extent to which all electors’ votes ‘carry
equal weight’. Studying electoral systems or boundaries has allowed scholars to
identify how systems might generate bias, disproportionality or ‘wasted votes’. The
choice of electoral administration is also recognises as important. Voter
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identification requirements, for example, may make some individuals more or less
likely to vote. Studying the implementation of election administration, however,
provides a further opportunity for citizens to have unequal influence and for parties
or candidates to be (dis)advantaged. Elections are highly complex events that
require careful management and much can, and often does, go wrong. Their
implementation involves complex relationships between people (individual workers,
employers, contractors), organisations (local and national governments, private
sector companies, QUANGOS amongst others) and voting technologies to deliver
electoral services at the front-line. Democratic theory and electoral studies has
often unrealistically assumed the perfect implementation of elections by electoral
professionals.
The study of electoral integrity has traditionally focussed on the how the agency of
office-seeking leaders (Birch, 2011; Hyde & Marinov, 2012; Norris, 2012a) or voters
(Minnite, 2010) can bring about defects in elections. However, electoral officials are
worth studying in themselves. Norris claims that one way in which elections can go-
wrong is when there is electoral maladministration, which refers to ‘routine flaws
and unintended mishaps by election officials… due to managerial failures,
inefficiency and incompetence’ (Norris, 2012b: 14). Vickery and Shein (2012)
distinguish between cases where electoral administrators are involved in deliberate
electoral fraud and unintentional malpractice, which amounts to a professional
breach of their duty of care. These approaches make much headway but a) don’t
link to democratic theory, and/or b) don’t consider all possible instances of electoral
maladministration.
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Electoral maladministration is defined here as defects in the implementation stage of
elections. There are four types of electoral maladministration at the implementation
stage of elections (table 1). Firstly, electoral officials might be directly complicit in,
or turn a blind eye to, electoral fraud, where electoral fraud involves the breaking of
defined laws to advantage a particular candidate or party. They might therefore turn
a blind eye to efforts from party officials to organise carousel voting, impersonation
or place undue pressure on voters. Similarly, they might be actively involved ballot
stuffing on behalf of party agents. They might be complicit in challenging voters of a
particular ethnicity by disproportionately asking them for ID. Electoral fraud is
therefore a conscious and deliberate act by the official.
A second type of maladministration is errors made by officials in the application of
rules and procedures prescribed by national laws, electoral management boards or
democratic norms. Examples of errors might include the loss of ballot boxes,
inaccurate counting of ballot papers, the failure to print sufficient number of ballot
papers for an election or the loss of citizens’ personal data. This differs from
electoral fraud because there is no conscious attempt by the official to advantage a
particular candidate or party. Implicit in this concept is that electoral administrators
could have averted maladministration if they had followed the guidance or
instructions they had been given: they ‘should have known better’.
A third type of maladministration is the inconsistent application of procedures
amongst electoral administrators. This can commonly occur when officials are given
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discretion without guidelines for, for example, interpreting the intent of the voter on
electoral stationary or allocating resources to polling stations. Some ballots or postal
vote applications might be accepted whereas others are not; some polling stations
may have long queues whereas other may not. These inconsistencies may unfairly
disenfranchise voters and also advantage candidates and parties. Fault for such
inconsistencies might lie with the administrator for interpreting voters’ intents
contrary to guidelines, however, it might also lie with the administrator with
electoral management for not providing useful guidelines or other actors should the
administrator be coerced in certain ways.
A fourth type of maladministration is systematic poor performance. Election
administration may be of a poor quality, not because electoral administrators have
ignored the manuals or guidance that they have been provided, but because they are
not performing their job effectively as they could. This might be illustrated by low
registration rates, inaccurate electoral registers, a high number of citizens being
unhappy about the service provided by electoral officials, a high level of complaints
about electoral services, or long poll queues (Elklit & Reynolds, 2005; OSCE, 2012).
Systematic poor performance may be the fault of the official who is exerting low
levels of effort in improving performance. However, it may also be at least partly the
result of other factors. The official may be required to implement elections in a way
that is not efficient in maximising electoral registration so blame may lie with the
designers of those procedures or electoral laws. If they are not working in an
institutional environment to which encourages improvement in their personal and
organisational performance then fault also lies with the broader systems of electoral
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management. Poor performance might not be deliberate because it might result
from some practical difficulties in implementing elections or an unawareness of
better ways of running elections. The designers of electoral procedures have finite
time and bounded rationality. The effectiveness of procedures may only be
periodically evaluated. However, we should note that partisan officials may
deliberately systematically underfund electoral services in the anticipation that this
might depress turnout in areas where party support is uneven.
Type Beneficiary Example Cause(s)
Electoral fraud Party or candidate Carousel voting
Impersonation
Undue pressure on
voters
Electoral
administrator
Political Culture
Candidates and
parties
Errors in the
application of
rules
None Loss of ballot boxes
inaccurate counting of
ballot papers
The failure to print
sufficient number of
ballot papers for an
election
Loss of personal data
of citizens
Electoral
administrator
Inconsistent
application of
procedures
Usually, none Ballots interpreted
differently
Uneven rejected rates
of postal ballots
Uneven levels of
access to polling
facilities
Electoral
administrator
Electoral
Management Board
Systematic poor
performance
Possible for one
party
Low registration rates
Inaccurate electoral
registers
A high number of
citizens being
unhappy about the
service provided by
electoral officials
A high level of
complaints about
Electoral
administrator
Electoral
Management Board
Partisan officials /
candidates
8
electoral services
Long poll queues
Table 1: A typology of electoral maladministration
Two points follow. Firstly, there are variations in the extent to which electoral
officials are conscious and deliberate actors in the causes of electoral
maladministration depending on the type of maladministration. Secondly, there is
an important relationship between structure and agency in diagnosing the causes of
electoral maladministration. If we centre analysis on front-line workers or street-
level bureaucrats who are responsible for implementing elections then their
individual action or agency is an important cause of electoral maladministration.
However, electoral maladministration does not take place in a vacuum but in a
structured socio-historical context (Hay, 2002: 89-134). Individuals will be more
likely to consciously or unconsciously contribute towards electoral maladministration
in some contexts than others. There are two important dimensions to this
environment. A political environment determines the extent to which officials are
coerced to act in favour of a particular party or candidate. This might be because of
threats of violence, rewards or a culture of clientelism. These problems
predominately exist in electoral autocracies or the early years of established
democracies. There is also an administrative environment which consists of the
practical challenges that administrators face in implementing elections. The latter is
focus of this article and it is argued that these are changing over time in the
established democracies such as Britain.
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Electoral Maladministration in Britain
Corrupt practices such as bribery and treating in British elections were thought to
have been ironed out in the nineteenth century in Britain (O'Leary, 1962: although
see: Rix, 2008), and Britain has frequently been held up as a model democracy.
However, there have been increasing concerns about the integrity of elections and
electoral maladministration.2 There have been concerns about electoral fraud by
candidates and party agents following high profile cases of fraud such as Birmingham
in 2004 (Stewart, 2006). Long established procedures such as household
registration, innovations such as postal voting and the absence of voter identification
have been criticised for not being robust enough to detect and deter electoral fraud,
even by international observers (Council of Europe, 2008).
There have been no claims that electoral administrators have been complicit in such
fraud, however. Rather, the long queues because of the under-staffing of polling
stations and the failure to print sufficient ballot papers at the 2010 general election
(Electoral Commission, 2010); delays in the counting of votes for the 2011 Northern
Ireland Assembly and Northern Irish local councils (Electoral Commission, 2011), and
mislaid ballot boxes in the 2012 London Mayoral elections (The Telegraph, 2012) are
examples of errors in the application of rules and procedures. There is evidence of
the inconsistent application of procedures. The 10pm cut off was also applied in
some jurisdictions but not others at the 2010 general elections. There are different
rejection rates of postal vote applications around the country and variations in the
extent to which waivers were granted by authorities to those who may not be able
2 Northern Ireland is largely excluded here because of a different historical dynamic.
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to provide a consistent signature (Rallings & Thrasher, 2009). There is evidence of
systematic poor performance. The Electoral Commission recently estimated that
there had been a dramatic decline in levels of registration as a proportion of the
voting age population. These were as high as 95% of the voting age population in
the 1950s and 1960s but are now thought to be as low as 82.3% (Rosenblatt,
Thompson, & Tiberti, 2012).
Explaining electoral maladministration
Research that sought to explain the sources of concern about the integrity of the
administration of elections in established democracies has predominately focussed
on the effects of voting technologies such as all-mail ballots, early voting, voter
identification requirements or voting equipment have on voter participation, levels
of electoral fraud or voter confidence in the electoral procedures (e.g. Alvarez,
Ansolabehere, & Stewart, 2005; Ansolabehere & Stewart, 2005; Atkeson, Bryant,
Hall, Saunders, & Alvarez, 2010). There has, however, been a growing ‘public
administration turn’ in the study of elections (James, 2012b; Montjoy, 2008). This
involves an explicit focus on the people involved in running elections. One aspect of
this research explicitly focuses on the implementation process. Scholars from the
field of public administration have long argued that policies might fail because of
problems in the implementation stage of the policy process (Howlett, 1991; Sabatier,
1986; Wildavsky & Pressman, 1973). Some policies designed from above might be
difficult to enforce at a local level. Kropt et al. (2012) explore how election officials
may have partisan views which effect how they implement electoral procedures.
James (2012b) conceptualises the implementation of election administration
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through a principal-agent approach to consider the range of policy instruments that
can be used to manage the implementation process (also see: Alvarez, Atkeson, &
Hall, 2012a, 2012b). However, the challenges that officials face at the
implementation stage have not been systematically studied in the area of election
administration.
Methodology
What challenges do electoral administrators face in the implementation of elections?
How are these changing over time? Proponents of ‘bottom-up’ policy making have
long suggested mining the knowledge of ‘street level bureaucrats’ when developing
policies (Hanf & Porter, 1978). Drawing from theories of public administration and
interviewing those involved in the administration of elections can generate new
understandings of the problems that may occur in implementing change in elections
(James, 2012b; James, 2012c; Montjoy, 2008, 2010; Moynihan & Silva, 2008).
This article draws from the experience of local electoral officials (LEOs) involved in
running elections in the UK to identify the new challenges that they have faced in the
implementation process. LEOs are conceptualised as ‘front line workers’ (Durose,
2009; Lipsky, 1980) who have ‘local knowledge’ which is an important resource in
identifying the nature of problems and the effects of possible changes. Borrowing
Yannow, Durose suggests that ‘local knowledge’ is:
‘a kind of non-verbal knowing that evolves from seeing, interacting with someone (or some place
or something) over time’ (Yanow, 2004: 12). As implied, this ‘knowing’ is contextual and refers to
a specific setting and reflects ‘very mundane yet expert understanding from lived experience’
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(Yanow, 2004: 12). Front-line workers develop their ‘local knowledge’ from their own subjective
interpretations or ‘readings’ of a situation’ (Durose, 2009: 36).
Local knowledge can, therefore, help to foresee implementation problems, identify
the unintended consequences of changes and establish how ‘things work, in reality’.
This article uses an original dataset of interviews with UK LEOs that took place in
2011. Overall, 74 interviews were undertaken across 41 organisations, in England,
Scotland Wales by the author. Respondents were asked to explain the key
challenges that they faced in the organisation of elections. Interviews lasted about
an hour. The interviews were semi-structured in order to let the interviewees define
the issues. The names of individuals and authorities included in the study were
withheld so that the interviewees could speak freely. A quota sampling method was
used to ensure that all different authority types were included in England, Scotland
and Wales.3 A mix of urban and rural authorities was also included.
A thematic analysis of the interviews was conducted to identify common challenges.
Thematic analysis ‘involves the searching across a data set… to find repeated
patterns of meaning’ (Braun & Clarke, 2006: 86). Interviews were transcribed and
themes identified from the texts. The aim was to identify both semantic and latent
meanings. Semantic themes involve the construction of themes on the basis of the
literal wording of the transcripts. Latent themes require the researcher to read
across the cases to identify underlying phenomena that are not always explicitly
3 The sample included London boroughs (5), Unitary Authorities (4), Metropolitan district authorities
(9), Two-tier 'shire' counties (5), Welsh unitary authorities (6), Scottish councils (5) and Scottish VJBs
(7).
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stated by respondents. This research process requires the researcher to undertake
‘a constant moving back and forward between the entire data set, the coded
extracts of data… and the analysis of the data’ (ibid, p.86). Following Fereday and
Muir-Cochrane (2006), the process of developing themes was both inductive from
the data and deductive from theory.
New challenges in the implementation of elections
The interviews revealed ten core themes of challenges that LEOs face in
implementing elections effectively.
1. Increased apathy, decreased trust
LEOs involved in compiling the register complain that increased apathy causes them
significant problems compiling the electoral register. There was a core pool of
citizens that they failed to include on the register each year.
There’s a general apathy towards elections and politics… we’ll never crack that final 5-10% of
people who just have absolutely no desire to get onto the register.
LEOs suggested that they needed to invest increasing resources on schemes such as
performance pay for canvassers, employing former bailiffs and extended local
advertising simply to stop the register falling further.
A minority of LEOs also claimed that citizens increasingly questioned the
‘anachronistic’ security provisions that they had in place for voting. No voter
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identification required is required at either the polling or registration stage of the
election. They claimed that this system was based on ‘trust’ but that this trust no
longer exited. There were changing expectations amongst citizens about the security
procedures required when interacting with government services.
‘[E]verybody needs to produce a PIN number or a signature for most things they do nowadays.’
2. Changing urban Britain: increased crime and problems with urban geography
The main source of names for the electoral register has traditionally been the annual
canvass but this has become increasingly difficult to conduct. There are concerns
about the safety of canvassers. Public abuse of canvassers was very common and
EROs therefore often struggle to recruit canvassers.
‘If a person of authority or is seen to be part of an institution goes in there they’re just drummed
out. I mean they’re just not accepted… I think we’ve only had one apart from the odd dog bite,
we’ve only had one canvasser who was physically assaulted, that’s one too many. We’ve had a
number of them who have been verbally assaulted and if somebody doesn’t want to register then
should we be subjecting staff or canvassers to that?’
Councils would often ask canvassers whether there were areas in which they did not
feel safe and would then not knock in these ‘no go areas’ in future canvasses.
However, the process works both ways. Often members of the public may not
answer the door fearing unsolicited doorknockers.
‘And then you get little old ladies who are on their own who just won’t answer the door after 6pm
because there have been bogus callers.’
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Urban architecture does not facilitate an annual canvass either. Properties such as
high-rise flats are difficult to access.
‘[W]here you’ve got HMOs, where three or four storey property is – there are bedsits there,
there’s shared communal facilities, and there are 8 to 16 doorbells that don’t work on the door,
or at the side of the door. How do you get somebody to the door? Legislation doesn’t cater for
that.’
In rural areas the population can be so sparse that conducting a complete door-
knock becomes very expensive. Some areas are also heavily covered by holiday
homes and sublet properties.
3. Legal complexity and diversity
There has been a considerable increase in the legal complexity of elections in Britain
as a result of a considerable rise in the frequency of elections and types of elections
since 1997. In addition to Westminster, local government and European
Parliamentary elections, there are now Scottish government, Welsh government,
Mayoral and Police and Crime Commissioner elections. Many of the elections are
run under a different electoral system. This has added to complexity of election
administration and makes administrative errors and poor organisational
performance more likely.
Poll management is different because, certainly now, it’s changing. One year is very different
from the next year. A few years ago, before my time, the norm was you’d have a local election on
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its own and then, every now and again, you would have a – perhaps a parliamentary or European
election tagged on to that. And so combination of elections was the rarity. Now it’s completely
tipped up on its head, where just having a, sort of, say, local election, or having any sort of
election, is more rare than it used to be.
One returning officer recalled:
On one occasion we had a by-election and a local election on the same day so we had two
candidates being elected and an error was made in the way the count was done. What effectively
happened was they counted all the ones that were both one party and they counted separately
the mixes where there was more than one. Then through an administrative error when they
added them all up they double counted some of the mixed ones. The result was that a BNP
candidate got elected rather than a Labour candidate.
Devolution has also created different regulatory frameworks for elections. An LEO
reported that one year they had conflicting deadlines for the closing dates of postal
vote applications. Legal complexity also makes it more difficult to convey
information to the electorate and for them to understand. This is important when
the public are commonly poor at completing forms.
It’s so much to read, when you tell them about the opt-out box, the jury box, the 16 to 18 year
olds, there is so much to have to tell them. And every year we try to revamp our form so it looks
a bit more user-friendly but I don’t know, I think it’s just a form really that people think “Well, do I
have to fill this in, I’m not really interested, what does it mean to me?”
Legal Fragmentation is a further problem. Election law is not contained in one Act
but is spread across a variety of Acts and Amendment Acts – approximately over 35
primary pieces of legislation and over 100 pieces of secondary legislation (Electoral
17
Commission, 2012b). This poses particular problems for ‘newcomers’ who are not
aware of older legislation.
One of the things that we all find quite difficult is the convoluted legislation. Different pieces of
legislation have different timetables and different days count in and count not in. Some of the
legislation is UK some of it is Scottish Government. And it’s all amendment Act, amendment Act,
amendment Act… It’s just not understandable to the vast majority of people and most of the
administrators as well. And we…. will sit and argue black and white over a piece of legislation. I
mean is this timetable right? Yes it is. No it’s not. Yes it is. Not it’s not.
Legislative changes have also become more frequent and are commonly made very
close to the run up to an election leaving uncertainty in the planning. The Gould
inquiry (2007) into the problems in the 2007 Scottish elections found that late
legislation was a key problem and recommended that no changes were made less
than six months before an election. However, this advice was not always heeded.
In the run up to each election more or less each election there’s an election order, new legislation
and more often or not we’re in a position to run an election but waiting for the legislation to be
finalised. But the legislators don’t account for the time it takes software houses to change
systems, test them, implement them with all the customers and let customers confidently run
with it. So again you get the impression that the legislators or the political classes seem to think
that computers just sort themselves at the press of a button but it does take change.
The challenge of rising complexity is heightened, LEOs report, by an exodus of staff
from the profession. Many long-standing members of the profession are retiring
early because of public sector cuts or pressures of the job (see below). New staff are
18
not being brought though the system, they suggest, and authorities have faced
problems recruiting experienced staff.
There’s getting to be quite a lack of knowledge now because older people are finishing.
4. New Technology
The wider availability of new technology has led to rising expectations amongst
citizens about electoral services and their changed behaviour. Many citizens think
that electoral registration is isn’t necessary because they use other government
services and they expect their share data to be shared.
You know I’m registered for Council Tax is a huge misconception. They think because they’re
registered and paying Council Tax they’re registered for electoral registration.
We had one chap turned up at a polling station and it was his right to vote. He hadn’t sent a form
back for seven years but, you know, he should still have been given a vote according to him.
Citizens’ expectations about data-sharing also causes many to not register. Some
refuse to be included, LEOs reported, because they feared that their information
would be used for other purposes such as calculating benefit entitlements or
preventing tax avoidance.
So many of our canvassers come to us and say “I’m sure there’s somebody else living there but
she says she’s there on her own.”
Citizens may also wish to have their name kept off for other reasons.
19
‘There are gangsters out there after people, there are people with huge debts, there are people
whose marriages have split up in really acrimonious circumstances – they don’t want to be on
public registers. And such is the interest in politics, you know nobody wants to vote anyway you
know that’s very much the feedback we get.’
Some LEOs are proactive data-matching databases within their local authority.
However, they such databases are often imperfect for the purposes of compiling or
checking the accuracy of a register as there is no single national identity record, like
in states such as Estonia.
New technology offers opportunities for increased productivity. However, LEOs
report that this requires increased investment in new skills for staff. In the process
of adapting to them errors can easily be made. In Scotland electronic counting
equipment has been used by officials but some noted a number of teething
problems with such innovations.
A big problem for us just now and logistically we’re looking at we don’t want the electors to fold
the ballot papers next year because they’re going to go into scanners. In every other election we
tell them to fold the ballot paper. So we don’t want them to do that because it means that at the
other end we’ll have to open them up, flatten them all out to go through the scanners.
5. Population Movements
Increased population movements have made keeping the electoral register up-to-
date more challenging. Inner-city areas were difficult to keep track of:
20
Well just in terms of our [inner London authority]. It has this huge population churn … every
couple of months and we get thousands of new names. So there’s this constant pressure
throughout the year for the updating of the register (sic).
Immigration from non-English speaking countries poses new challenges for LEOs4
because some communities may not engage with the registration process or it may
require significant investment in multi-lingual materials.
We have got quite a large black minority ethnic community, big chunks of which are not
necessarily culturally attuned to the life in the UK. Many of whom don’t speak English as their
first language; those are all a whole host of barriers that you need to get across.
Some authorities have been proactive at tackling under registration by employing
canvassers who speak the native language. In one authority in the East of England a
Portuguese speaker was recruited and she was able to substantially raise registration
amongst the Portuguese community working on farms, but this proved expensive.
Bi-lingual printed resources can also be costly and complex for the citizen:
If you compare our [bi-lingual English & Welsh] forms to an English Authority, their forms are far
more user-friendly (sic).
6. Resources and Financial austerity
LEOs commonly report that they are faced with high costs running elections and
frequently experience difficulty obtaining sufficient money from the Council. One
4 To be eligible to vote, citizens need to be a British citizen or an Irish, qualifying Commonwealth or
European Union citizen who is resident in the UK.
21
authority explained that they commonly had to try to build up reserves from one
election to pay for the next. There would commonly be unexpected costs such as
those for new ballot papers should there be an unusually high number of candidates.
[t]he national elections are funded generally from central Government but you can’t, you don’t
recover all the costs, there are a lot of costs that are borne by the Council…. And that determines
obviously how much you want to invest.
Hard choices often have to be made about what services could be provided to the
public. Services which were non-statutory, such as public awareness schemes are
therefore often cut. Some local authorities did not door-knock all houses which did
not return an electoral registration form, even though this was a legal requirement
and also a requirement to meet the Electoral Commission performance standards
because of costs (Electoral Commission, 2012a). There are also many other everyday
examples of where LEOs are making judgements about the value of additional
registered citizens or votes.
Ultimately my goal is to get 100% registration. But I know that that is a bridge too far. But you
should advertise more, you should be doing this. We’re downsizing as a council. My resources
staff wise have gone down. So to maintain what we’ve got is a challenge.
Some LEOs suggest that they are often treated as a low priority compared to public
services such as education, healthcare and children services.
I mean we’ve always been a kind of Cinderella of the Authority. When it’s Parliamentary or a
European Assembly, Councils here aren’t particularly bothered because it doesn’t affect them
22
The challenge of providing sufficient funding has heightened, LEOs suggest because
local government is having to undertake budget cuts, yet simultaneously, election
departments were required to undertake new work in line with the reports expected
of them.
We’ve lost a member of staff with the budget cutbacks now, somebody had left so obviously that
vacancy is not being filled. When it comes to an election we’re desperate for people.
It’s the changing face of elections. There’s been this… perfect storm, in that Local Authorities are
having to make savings across the board but, at the same time, we – through this parliament –
we’re going through a number of constitutional – drastic constitutional changes, which actually is
increasing the workload significantly.
I think that the electoral administration is in a world of its own really as if the credit crunch hadn’t
occurred as if we didn’t have to take 20% out of out budgets (sic).
LEOs very commonly stress the tight timetables involved in the delivery of elections.
The period from the deadlines for completing the electoral register and nomination
of candidates to election-day are particularly tight. If they are under-resourced
during these times then errors become likely.
You can’t devise your own timetable for an election, it’s given to you and you have four weeks to
get everything in place, appoint your staff, book your polling stations, get your ballot papers
done. One little bit of that will go wrong and it could make headlines as it did in some authorities.
23
Staff are consequently forced to work extremely long hours during the election
period which can result in burn out.
[we made it] only by the skin of our teeth really, particularly with this year’s election. We were
working until 12 ‘o clock every night, we came in at weekends and you rely on the commitment of
the staff really to see through that election because you’ve deadlines for everything.
Larger authorities are often more able to cope in the run up to elections because of
the additional capacity. Yet, clearly resource constraints and spirally costs contribute
to a situation in which names can be missed off registers, errors can appear on ballot
papers and polling stations can be under resourced.
7. Networked governance
LEOs often face increased problems co-ordinating with the increased range of actors
involved in the provision of electoral services. Some LEOs are often reliant on a
small pool of private organisations such as printers because Councils do not have in-
house facilities. The outsourcing of this work has not always been successfully
completed by private contractors. In England and Wales co-ordination also is
commonly required between authorities because there are different tiers of local
government in the election. In Scotland, the function of electoral registration and
the conduct of the poll is split between organisations. Electoral districts commonly
cross a council boundary which means that organisations have to co-ordinate their
registers together. Sometimes these relationships can break down.
24
Constituencies always going to be beyond the Council area, so then we would have a working
relationship with a neighbouring Local Authority. And again we have good relationships, so it
works. But there are dangers where if that was to break down, then you have issues.
Whereas LEOs were once reliant on information provided to them by the Home
Office, information now comes from a range of organisations including the (national
and regional) Electoral Commission, SOLACE, Scottish Electoral Management Board,
the police and Association of Electoral Administrators. LEOs also report that there
common co-ordination problems within authorities because the formally appointed
Returning Officer is a high-level official who has little interest in the running of the
election.
Most returning officers who tend to be the Chief Exec, you know, they come in and know nothing
about elections, other than to pick up the fee that they get. They don’t really want to get
involved with the legal side of the election; they leave that to the Elections Team.
8. Rising Partisanship?
In some authorities, LEOs claim that election administration has been increasingly
politicised with local candidates making accusations of fraud against other
candidates or malpractice against administrators. Local politicians complain about
polling station adjustments, if they feel that their interests are adversely affected. In
some areas electoral challenges were become increasingly common:
It’s become more divisive politics, whereas before it may have been done more on a amenable
level, there are now real party political divides, for which administrators will get caught in the
25
middle. And, because we’ve had a number of challenges, I think that’s only emboldened people
that they’re more prepared to make a challenge, not always for the right reasons, maybe just to
make political statements, you know, which can be difficult. And it’s harder and harder for the
Returning Officer to maintain a, “I’m here as the referee,” not even as the referee, just to
administer the election....Allegations of misconduct, of all sorts of things, for again, we got
caught, as the Returning Office, in the crossfire. And it didn’t matter whether it was true or not,
anything that was legitimate to help them have a rerun of the election because they lost it, or
whatever, was a legitimate target. (sic)
These claims were a minority and there is therefore little evidence of a systematic
politicisation of election administration at the local level across the UK. Rather,
there was evidence of pockets of partisan claims which were built on prior
antagonisms between local politicians. There is, however, evidence that election
administration became increasingly driven by party politics at the national level in
Britain towards the end of the twentieth century (James, 2012a: 125-168).
9. Changing lifestyles; rising expectations
LEOs report that they face rising expectations about the services that they provide to
voters. Employment patterns have changed dramatically in Britain with a rise in
service-sector and part-time employment. This has meant that some citizens find it
increasingly hard to vote on election days because there is a mismatch between the
voting procedures and the opportunities to vote that citizens have. Registration
procedures are also affected. There were some pilots in the UK of innovative
systems such as text-message voting and internet voting from 2000-7 (James, 2011)
but these were not taken forward to permanent changes. Some LEOs reported that
canvassing was difficult because it was difficult to call when all citizens were in.
26
A lot of our canvassers work here in the day. It’s something that they do as an additional bonus.
So they’re not going out until 5pm and then people are just coming home from work or they’re
gone straight to the gym. So they have to make up to about four visits before they can establish
that somebody’s in.
10. The development of 24/7 and social media
LEOs suggest that the development of the 27/7 news media and social media have
placed new pressures on electoral administrators and amplify any mistakes that
might have been made. On the night of the 2010 general election, the news media
focused on problems in polling stations that were being circulated by social media.
These problems were, perhaps, not new or uncommon in the past, but could now be
more readily reported and circulated by citizens. According to one LEO, who had
worked in elections for over 30 years:
And that only occurred in 29 polling stations out of 40,000 and yet the impression was given that
the entire administration of elections was in a serious state. The irony is that probably going back
15 or 20 years there were far worse things that happened at elections but they never, ever got
into the public eye because the public gaze wasn’t on that aspect of elections. But now it
highlights that we have to be extremely careful about every single aspect of the operation of an
election that we undertake.
Many LEOs suggest that in a post-Florida environment the media and politicians are
more aware of the news-worthiness of failures in elections and therefore look for
problems:
27
Our local newspaper is very on-the-ball and would pick up any issue that we've not dealt with.
local politicians will even pick on the smallest wee thing they can find to get themselves in the
newspaper, promote themselves and stuff.
Maintaining a public perception that elections were free from electoral
maladministration is therefore more challenging.
Analysis
New times, New Challenges
This article has identified the key contemporary challenges that LEOs face in
implementing elections in Britain. The interviews provide snapshots of the
challenges that administrators face at a particular moment in time. However, the
problems described also enable diachonric analysis which charts the rise of
challenges over time (Hay, 2002: 148-150) because many of the challenges are
relatively new and linked to a particular period of socio-administrative historical
development. To illustrate this, it is helpful to therefore identify three heuristic
periods of implementation challenges in Britain (table 1), which are likely to be found
in other established democracies.
During the pre-modern period (c.1832-1918) in Britain electoral administrators had
to conduct elections with only a limited franchise. The population was very stable
and the legal framework was simple as elections were relatively new. There was a
relatively low take up of mass media but knowledge of cases of electoral
28
maladministration, notably electoral fraud was widespread, especially in elections
such as the 1868 general election (O'Leary, 1962: 58). Relatively simple technologies
were employed by LEOs to conduct elections. Elections were initially via a show of
hands and no electoral registration was required prior to 1832. Parish officers, who
oversaw the Poor Law, were given responsibility for compiling the register. The
Secret Ballot Act led to paper ballots being revised.
New challenges were, however, brought by the modern period (c.1918-1990). The
dramatic extensions to the franchise meant that an expanded administrative
machinery was required to deal with the enormous growth in registrations and ballot
papers cast. This posed enormous logistical challenges, especially because the
franchise extension took place during a period of war which created significant
population displacements and drained resources (James, 2012a: 129-133).
Registration was transferred to the Clerks of the County Borough Council who ‘not
from rate-books and claims but by “house to house or other sufficient inquiry”’
(Butler, 1963). Local government remained responsible for the electoral register and
the conduct of the poll and was able to use its resources to complete the task. This
was a period during which high levels of registration were maintained and high
electoral participation achieved with relatively infrequent questioning or
interrogation of Britain’s electoral machinery.
Further historical research is required to identify more clearly the nature of the
challenges facing administrators in these earlier stages. However, the interviews
suggest that new challenges are arising from a post-industrial, digital age period
29
(c.1990s – present) characterised by demographic, technological, legal, economic
and political complexity and fluidity. These are linked to broader developments.
There have been socio-economic, cultural and legal changes in Britain. Declining
social trust (Putnam, 2000) can bring about increased apathy amongst the public
which can drain resources (theme 1). Rising economic inequality and the
‘ghettoisation’ of parts of urban Britain pose problems conducting the electoral
canvass (theme 2). A more complex legal framework has developed as a result of
the layering of legislation (theme 3).
There have been demographic changes. Whereas the population was relatively
static in previous times it has become increasingly mobile and diverse, partly as a
result of expanded immigration, especially from the EU (Office for National Statistics,
2011) (theme 5).
Technological change has posed new challenges for administrators. Technology has
opened up new opportunities and challenges for the state to provide public services
(Dunleavy & Margetts, 2006; Dunleavy, Margetts, Bastow, & Tinkler, 2006). Part of
the promise of new ICT has been to realise productivity gains by consolidating
existing ‘labyrinths of discrete mainframe facilities and associated administrative
units’ (ibid, p.482). The provision of ‘One-stop shops’ offers the opportunity to
remove duplication of government services (ibid, p.484). However, it has also
changed citizens’ expectations about how governments use ICT which alters their
behaviour and can make them more difficult to register (theme 4&9). LEOs are faced
30
with the need to re-skill and retrain in using these services to maximise registrations
and make the registration process clear to citizens. The development of 24/7 and
social media more quickly reports the errors that electoral administrators make
(theme 10).
There have been major changes in the management of British state. Resource and
financial austerity have been core concerns since the ‘crisis of the state’ in the 1970s.
This combined with the rising costs of elections pose cost pressures and choices
about which areas to maximise performance in (theme 6). It is commonly claimed
that the new public management reforms, introduced to many advanced capitalist
democracies such as Britain, have led to the fragmentation of the state. The process
of disaggregating public sector hierarchies has been argued to have led to the state
being ‘hollowed out’ which has reduced the capacity of state actors to achieve policy
outcomes and introduced new co-ordination problems (Dunleavy, Margetts, Bastow,
& Tinkler, 2006: 469-478; Rhodes, 1997). There is evidence of these in the delivery
of elections (theme 7).
Pre-modern Modern Post-industrial
Time 1832-1918 1918-1990s 2000 - Characteristics Limited Mass franchise Demographic,
technological, legal, economic and political complexity and fluidity.
Main methods Self-administered House to house enquiries Annual canvass
Moves towards: Online registration Individual registration, electronic
31
registration, data matching
Political participation and civic trust
Limited franchise Mass franchise -mass participation
Mass franchise depleted participation
Population dynamics
Stable Stable Fluid
Legal framework Linear Linear Complex Multilevel
Media Low take-up Mass media 24/7 Internet age Web 2.0
Technology Paper Mass record systems
ICT and database driven
Expectations gap Low resources required, low expectations
High resources, high expectations
Potential for under resourced, high expectations
Governance Locally led Centrally led split Networked governance
Partisanship High Low High
Table 2: periods of election administration challenges in Britain
Institutional drift as the cause of maladministration
Recent new institutionalist analysis provides a useful conceptual language for
capturing these changes. Institutional layering is a process whereby ‘new rules are
attached to existing ones, thereby changing the ways in which the original rules
structure behaviour’ (2010: 16). Institutional layering may have created the
environment which electoral maladministration is more likely. The proliferation of
legislation on elections (theme 3) has increased the legal complexity of elections.
Moreover, there has been no legal consolidation of the legislation despite some calls
from organisations such as the Law Commission, the Electoral Commission and the
Association of Electoral Administrators. This complexity has frequently contributed
towards errors and, no doubt, absorbed time and resources from LEO.
32
The concept of institutional drift, meanwhile, was originally developed by Jacob
Hacker (2004). Drift ‘occurs when rules remain formally the same but their impact
changes as a result of shifts in external conditions’ (Mahoney & Thelan, 2010: 17).
Hacker sought to explain how welfare provision in the US had undergone profound
change after World War II. He notes that social policy provision had remained
broadly resistant to change but that, in effect, change had occurred because of these
policies no longer provided citizens with the protection from risk that they once had.
Exogenous changes such as changing family structures, patterns of employment and
rising inequality have meant that old social policies do not have the effect that they
once did (Hacker, 2004). Importantly, the sources of change are therefore not
necessarily a result of active policy changes, but exogenous dynamics. Institutional
drift therefore occurs because 'institutions require active maintenance; to remain
what they are they need to be reset and refocused, or sometimes fundamentally
recalibrated or renegotiated' (Streeck & Thelan, 2005: 24). A principal cause of drift
is therefore inaction by those able to make and change institutions. There has been
institutional drift in British election administration because the institutions, policy
instruments and methods that electoral administrators use to implement elections
have not always adapted to the new challenges identified. British election
administration has its roots in the 1872 Municipal Elections Act which established
the secret ballot and the 1918 Representation of the People Act which set out the
framework for the annual canvass and compilation of the electoral register. All of
the above themes (except, perhaps 3 – legal complexity) report exogenous changes
to electoral institutions that they have struggled to keep pace with.
33
Conclusions
In the aftermath of the 2010 general election, the distinguished scholar David
Denver labelled some British electoral administrators ‘incompetent’ (Denver, 2010:
602) and Chair the of the Electoral Commission, Jenny Watson, complained claimed
that some Returning Officers:
‘did not properly plan for, or react to, polling day problems. That is unacceptable. People in these
areas were badly let down’ (Gilligan, 2010).
These concerns about the administration of elections have been shared in many
democracies but the failures of electoral management have not been sufficiently
theorised or explained. This article has offered a more developed conceptualisation
of electoral maladministration. It has argued that while the individual action of
administrators often contributes towards electoral malpractice their actions take
place in a socio-historical context. This has changed in recent years, which has led to
new implementation challenges are arising in the conduct of elections.
There are three important consequences. Firstly, a focus on the people involved in
the implementation of elections can bring about new insights into why problems
occur in the administration of elections. Identifying the challenges that individuals
face in the implementation of elections can help to build knowledge about best
policy instruments for improving performance and reducing electoral
maladministration. Secondly, research on the impact of voting technologies such as
34
postal voting or registration procedures on voter participation, electoral fraud and
voter confidence should be sensitive to the temporal effects of those procedures.
Some procedures (such as the annual canvass) might be more in some conditions or
periods of time than others. Thirdly, the accumulative effect of these developments
is that electoral integrity may not be as easy to achieve in established democracies
as it once was. Concerns about electoral integrity may therefore be a ‘normal’
condition of post-industrial, digital-era governance. However, further research is
required to identify the causes and remedies electoral maladministration.
35
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