Annual Report and Accounts 2019/20

For The Electoral Commission, 2019-20 has been a year characterised by a busy and shifting electoral timetable. In May, after supporting the delivery of local government elections in England and Northern Ireland, we responded quickly to the UK Government’s decision to hold the European Parliamentary elections. In October, we mobilised to support an unscheduled UK Parliamentary general election on 12 December. In early 2020, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, we advised on and supported the UK Government postponing the May polls, recognising the impacts on voters, campaigners, and local authorities.

Ahead of the 2019 polls, we provided support to all those taking part. We ran public awareness campaigns to ensure that everyone who was eligible could register and cast their vote; one in four people saw our general election campaign  and electoral administrators added more than 1.2 million people to the registers. During November and December, we fielded nearly 9,000 enquiries from the public, while almost 1.3 million users visited our website; giving people the information they needed to vote with confidence. We supported a record number of non-party campaigners to participate in the elections, and published information on over £113 million of donations accepted by political parties in the UK in 2019, ensuring the public could see where parties got their funding. We worked closely with the National Police Chiefs’ Council, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and the College of Policing to produce guidance to help candidates run respectful campaigns and protect themselves from abuse.

The electoral community rose to the challenge and, despite the uncertainty and tight timescales of the year’s events, delivered well-run polls. Our public opinion research found that the majority of respondents had confidence in the way these polls ran (69% for the general election), though levels of confidence were lower than at previous such polls, and strains in the system are increasingly evident. As with all elections, we supported the work of electoral administrators - 99% of those who responded to our post-poll survey said they found our guidance and resources useful.

In addition to the busy electoral timetable, we supported electoral administrators in two areas to hold recall petitions, each resulting in a subsequent by-election. We reported on the administration of these petitions and shared recommendations for future improvements with the UK Government. We also supported preparations for important changes to the annual canvass in Great Britain, which will streamline the annual audit of electoral registers. We have developed guidance on the new process, so administrators understand their responsibilities, and created user-friendly forms for the public. We have worked closely with the Association of Electoral Administrators, Scottish Assessors Association, Solace and officials from the UK’s governments to ensure we all embed the changes successfully.

We maintained the registers of political parties and campaigners, and oversaw the laws on political finance, publishing financial returns, administering policy development grants, providing guidance and advice, and taking regulatory actions. We have a strong track- record of success in the courts, but look to learn too from all outcomes. We also enabled or supported related bodies in their regulatory work, such as the police, CPS, Information Commissioner, Ofcom, Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. We also engaged with the main social media companies to encourage their role in transparency in political campaigning.

We have continued to strengthen our relationships with, and fulfil our accountabilities to, the Scottish, Welsh and UK parliaments. This has included evaluating the voter ID pilots conducted in England; helping prepare for franchise changes in Wales and Scotland; and supporting significant electoral reform bills in the Scottish and Welsh parliaments. We worked with the Electoral Office for Northern Ireland on plans to deliver the full-scale canvass it is required to run every 10 years, which will now take place in 2021.

We are seeing alignment between our recommendations and the initiatives and priorities of the UK’s governments, such as the UK Government’s commitments on defending democracy and the Scottish Parliament inclusion of many of our recommendations in its new referendums legislation. We will continue to encourage all governments to implement our recommendations, including reforms of the rules for digital campaigning and on electoral law more broadly, founded on the excellent recommendations made by the Law Commissions’ final report on the subject. In 2019, we published major research into the accuracy and completeness of the electoral registers, as well as feasibility studies on options for modernising electoral registration, demonstrating the potential benefits of future reform in this area.

We are also committed to making reforms of our own. In the last year, we continued reviewing all party descriptions included on the register, to help voters clearly identify candidates on the ballot paper. Working with the main political parties, we have made good progress on a new online tool that will make it easier for parties and campaigners to register with us and report financial information. In a system where most comply with the political finance rules, our preference is to help increase compliance rather than to take enforcement action afterwards. This new tool will play a role in helping those we regulate to achieve that.

To underpin our work, we have improved our human resources, planning and digital technology functions. We have implemented new online planning, governance and procurement systems. We have also invested in staff engagement and development, resulting in staff turnover falling by 19 percentage points.

As we look ahead to the coming year, a key concern remains the risks presented by archaic and complex electoral law. Combined with continued pressure on local authority resources and capacity, and an outdated registration system, it is increasing the strain on electoral administrators and failing to keep pace with technological advances. We stand ready to work with governments and other stakeholders to address these challenges.

We look forward to continuing to work with the UK’s governments to ensure their existing reform plans can be taken forward effectively. We are working closely with all governments on the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic for elections and electoral processes, and talking to others, to see what lessons we can learn and what further changes might usefully be introduced for the future.