Concerns over likely accuracy of turnout data raised by Levelling-Up Committee Chair ahead of voter ID changes

Clive Betts, Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (LUHC) Committee has written to the Chair of the Electoral Commission, John Pullinger, to raise concerns about the accuracy of data due to be collected on voter turnout at the upcoming local elections on 4 May 2023.

The letter, sent on Wednesday (26 April), calls for the Electoral Commission to confirm they will be “collecting data on the number of individuals turned away outside of the polling station by meeter-greeters (in addition to voters turned away at the desk)”.

The LUHC Committee notes that it is aware that a “significant number” of local authorities plan to use meet-and-greeters stationed outside polling stations to support the implementation of voter ID.

Parliament passed the Election Act 2022 in April of last year, giving the Government powers to implement rules requiring voters to present identification cards before voting.

Appropriate forms of identification include a driver's licence or passport. However, those without a valid form of ID can apply for a voter authority certificate (VAC). The deadline to apply for this has now passed.

The correspondence notes that at the Committee’s most recent session for its inquiry into electoral registration on 17 April, Peter Stanyon, Chief Executive of the Association of Electoral Administrators, said that: “The returning officers are required where they have a meeter-greeter to report those they have advised at the door and turned away, and those at the desk as well. They will be reported as two separate things...The base standard is it is at the desk, because that is where the ballot papers will be and that is where the question is asked. Where there is a meeter-greeter, the commission is asking for that statistic and the Government are asking for that statistic as well.”

However, the letter goes on to say that in “direct contravention” to what the AEA's Stanyon said, “it has been brought to our attention that the Electoral Commission will not be asking returning officers to record data on the number of individuals who have been turned away for not presenting the necessary voter ID by meeter -greeters outside polling stations”.

The Committee’s letter points to a media report in The Guardian, 25 April, which states: “these greeters will not take a note of the number of people who leave when told about the requirements, the Electoral Commission has confirmed, meaning the total number of potentially disfranchised voters may never be known.”

The Committee shared its “deep concern” that the data relating to voter turnout will not be accurate if the Electoral Commission is only to record the number of individuals turned away at the desk.  

It added: “This presents a clear risk to the credibility of any recorded data and therefore any assessment of the true impact of voter ID on voter turnout at the forthcoming local elections."

The Electoral Commission said it had responded to the letter as follows: “Staff acting as greeters may be used in some polling stations to welcome voters, remind them about the need to show photographic ID, and help speed up the voting process. Under the law, polling station staff need to collect data on the people that cannot be issued with a ballot paper because they were unable to provide an accepted form of ID. This includes data on people who are turned away and later return to the polling station with accepted ID. This information can only be recorded at the ballot issuing desk, and not gathered by a greeter at the entrance. The presence of a greeter at a polling station is likely to affect the data recorded at the desk. For this reason, local authorities will need to separate out data for polling stations with and without greeters when submitting data after the polls.

“We will be reporting on data from polling stations on the proportion of people turned away from polling places or refused a ballot paper, and those who returned and were able to vote. As the above explains, this won’t reflect information collected by greeters. There is further information on what we will be reporting on at these elections on our website, which may be of interest.”

In a letter to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee this week, Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove responded to a member of the committee raising a concern about how data on electors without identification would be recorded, setting out a scenario whereby an elector learns of the requirement just outside the polling station, and returns home instead.

“This is, of course, a limitation in the data gathering that will be conducted at the polling station. Polling station staff can only record data where they are sure of what has occurred. We therefore cannot ask them to monitor every person walking in the vicinity of their polling station and attempt to guess the motivations of those who do not enter,” Gove said.

“We will be ensuring though that polling station staff indicate if they have assigned a ‘greeter’ to their polling station to inform electors of the new identification requirements on entry. This will allow us to separate out and analyse data where we know that it was more likely electors could have been reminded of the need for identification which they had not brought with them before reaching the desk of the polling station.”

The Secretary of State added that, in a similar way, the data gathering that will be conducted at the polling station will not include demographic data on electors. This poses an ethical risk of deterring electors from casting their vote and would be burdensome for electoral administrators to collect, he said.

“In addition, we will be seeking to supplement the data gathering taking place at the polling station," Gove added. "As referenced in the session, we are looking at our nationally representative public opinion survey among other options. The survey will ask electors whether they voted and, where they didn’t, their reason for not doing so. Similarly, it will ask electors whether they brought photographic identification with them to the polling station and where they did not, whether they later returned with correct identification and were able to cast their vote. The survey will collect anonymised demographic information on respondents.”

Lottie Winson