Prof Alistair Clark
Professor of Political Science at Newcastle University. He has written extensively on electoral integrity and administration and UK party politics. In addition to electoral integrity, he is currently working on a new edition of his book Political Parties in the UK (Bloomsbury).
X/Twitter: @ClarkAlistairJ
Email: alistair.clark@ncl.ac.uk
UK Election 2024
Section 1: Democracy and representation
1. Public anxiety and the electoral process (Prof Barry Richards)
2. How Nigel Farage opened the door to No. 10 for Keir Starmer (Prof Pippa Norris)
3. The performance of the electoral system (Prof Alan Renwick)
4. Tory downfall is democracy rectifying its mistakes (Prof Stephen Barber)
5. Votes at 16 and decent citizenship education could create a politically aware generation (Dr Ben Kisby, Dr Lee Jerome)
6. “An election about us but not for us”: the lack of communication for young people during GE2024 (Dr James Dennis)
7. Election timing: masterstroke or risky gamble? (Prof Sarah Birch)
8. The dog that didn’t bark? Electoral integrity and administration from voter ID to postal votes (Prof Alistair Clark)
9. A political gamble? How licit and illicit betting permeated the campaign (Dr Matthew Wall)
10. Ethnic diversity in politics is the new normal in Britain (Prof Maria Sobolewska)
11. Bullshit and Lies on the campaign trail: do party campaigns reflect the post-truth age? (Prof Darren Lilleker)
12. Stoking the culture wars: the risks of a more hostile form of polarised politics (Dr Jen Birks)
Running a general election is a vast logistical and administrative exercise. There are over 40,000 polling stations in Britain, and over 100,000 people will have been working on polling day to ensure everyone entitled to vote could do so and have their vote counted accurately. Around a quarter of the electorate now vote by post. This is normally all taken for granted, although election administration has been underfunded and under pressure for years.
Yet, the run-up to General Election 2024 was when election administration became part of the story. Postal voting problems became front page news. Voter identification requirements were implemented for the first time in a general election, part of a package of reforms introduced by the Elections Act 2022. Voters were turned away for not having the correct ID, while queues built up at polling stations. There is likely to have been some variation in practice in checking ID across polling stations.
Postal voting was first to hit the headlines. It emerged that some Scottish councils were setting up emergency centres so voters could pick up postal ballot packs. This was due to three factors colliding: the beginning of the Scottish school holidays in July meaning many voters would be away on polling day; a lack of specialist printers to print ballot papers and packs; and (increasingly) poor Royal Mail service. Postal voting problems soon extended to parts of England.
A separate problem emerged with overseas voters, many of whom had been encouraged to register by the extension of the franchise beyond 15 years outside the UK. Many overseas postal vote packs did not arrive through the international mail in time to be sent back to be counted. This was not a new problem but was made worse by the extension of the franchise. The Telegraph covered postal vote issues extensively as did other outlets.
Photographic voter identification was also expected to cause difficulties. This had ostensibly been introduced to help secure the ballot. Critics were not slow in perceiving a vote suppression measure.
English local elections in 2023, the first elections with voter ID, had seen voters taking longer to process in polling stations. The Electoral Commission estimated that around 14,000 voters (0.25% of those who tried to vote) had been turned away in those elections because of not having the correct ID. This was probably an underestimate.
In a general election, with almost twice the turnout, voter ID was expected to cause a significant problem. There were around 56,000 applications for a voter authority certificate, the substitute for voters with no photo identification, between the election being called on 22nd May 2024 and the deadline six days in advance of polling day.
Polling day saw social media reports of polling station queues from early in the day. It also saw numerous claims of would-be voters being turned away. As with postal votes, it is difficult to get an exact sense of how widespread these difficulties were and to what extent they were related to voter ID. Yet, queues in polling stations are hard to square with the low turnout experienced on polling day. This might be suggestive of voters taking longer to process in some locations. Alternatively, queues may just have been at a particular pinch point during the day. The extent to which prospective voters were turned away for lack of ID is, at time of writing, unknown.
Post-election reports from The Electoral Commission, Association for Electoral Administrators and others will pore over the details of these issues in due course. Both the Electoral Management Board for Scotland and the Electoral Commission have promised reviews of the postal voting system.
While there were some suggestions of legal action over postal votes, including from narrowly defeated candidates, this is probably unlikely. Election Petitions are private legal actions. They can only be submitted up to 21 days after polling day and can only be raised by constituency. There are substantial financial costs involved for litigants, including costs awarded against them if they are unsuccessful.
It is unlikely that the actual effects of either the postal voting or voter ID issues will ever be known accurately, whatever estimates are produced in post-election reports. These issues do however point to the need for a root and branch review of electoral administration post-election. At minimum, issues that need examined include:
•The resourcing and capacity of electoral administration
•How on-demand postal voting might be delivered when around a quarter of the electorate now vote by mail?
•The implementation of voter ID
The electoral timetable, with the needs of both voters and administrators balanced – these do not necessarily point in the same direction.
Labour have already signalled the intention to deal with voter ID’s implementation and also electoral registration, but these are only two among several pressing issues made worse by the complexity of electoral law. It is vital that the new government listen to suggestions to improve the electoral system in a way that its predecessor didn’t.
