THE chief executives of East Devon and Mid Devon district councils have been accused by the Parliamentary Select Committee of "repeatedly and brazenly" breaking the law in their failure to ensure everyone who is eligible to vote in their districts is registered to do so.
Mark Williams, Chief Executive and Electoral Registration Officer for East Devon District Council and Kevin Finan, Chief Executive for Mid Devon District Council, gave evidence on Monday, October 13, at the House of Commons on Political and Constitutional Reform who are investigating "Voter engagement in the UK".
Both Mr Williams and Mr Finan denied the accusation that they had broken the law in their falling short of the committee's requirements for door-to-door canvassing.
One committee member said that 3,231 homes in East Devon had not been canvassed after non-registration in 2013.
Mr Williams confirmed that he had employed all door-to-door canvassers who were being paid £8 an hour, yet the council had sent correspondence to parish council clerks less than a week before requesting canvassing assistance.
A report by the Electoral Commission found that East Devon had not met the canvassing standards as Mr Williams has said it had done. He then admitted to the select committee that no door-to-door canvassers had been used as other methods such as phone canvassing had been instead.
He also said that as his job was to ensure as many eligible voters were registered to vote as possible, if someone discovered they were not registered to vote on the day of an election, he would use the clerical error procedure to allow them to vote – contrary to the Representation of the People Act which states that no one can register to vote after the notice of election.
Mr Finan estimated that house to house canvassing would cost the authority around £40,000.
Both he and Mr Williams said their way of canvassing was more cost effective than door-to-door canvassing, such as phone or internet registration.
One member of the Select Committee said that if all Electoral Registration Officers had done as Mr Williams and Mr Finan had done, there would be more than 3m people missing from the electoral roll.
When Mr Williams was asked why the council's scrutiny committee had not examined the issue he said it had been the choice of the committee.
In July, members of the East Devon Alliance campaign group discovered that thousands of East Devon residents were not registered to vote ahead of the European Elections which may have been due to East Devon District Council's failure to fulfil a Government canvassing exercise.
A report by the Electoral Commission revealed that East Devon District Council was one of 17 local authorities across the country which fell short of its canvassing requirements to register households in person ahead of its introduction of a "major change" in registration format on June 10, 2014.
The change meant people who are eligible to vote must individually register instead of the head of the household registering for all members.
The switch was meant to cut down on potential for fraud, but campaigners fear it could mean people drop off the register though still wishing to remain on it.
In March 2013, all local authorities were tasked with contacting households which were not registered.
Mid Devon District Council was one of five councils, all based in Devon and Somerset, which reported that they did not meet the house-to-house enquiry standard in 2013; it had not conducted door-to-door canvassing.
And East Devon was one of the 17 which did not ensure that all non-responding properties were canvassed in person.
Chairman of the East Devon Alliance, Paul Arnott, said: "We were very concerned to hear that Mr Williams was called to Parliament to explain himself and no one at the council new.
"We are now gravely concerned that there seems to be a disparity to what he said to the committee and what appears to be the facts."
An East Devon District Council spokesperson, said: East Devon has one of the highest percentages of the population registered to vote (95%) in the country, with the national average at 84%.
With 3% of properties in East Devon second homes and 1.7% empty at any one time, the percentage of eligible voters currently not on the register is very small indeed.
Follow-up calls and visits are triggered when the original form and two follow-up postal reminders have failed to gain the required information.
Turning to the question of door-to-door canvassing, this was done in East Devon until several years ago when one of the council's canvassers was mugged whilst carrying out her duties and door-knocking was found to be a less effective method than data-matching with other information held by the council – such as council tax payers and housing benefit claimants.
This method involves telephoning or emailing people thought to be potential voters and the success rate was good compared with travelling to remote rural areas in the autumn months.
However, Electoral Registration Officers and the Government formed the view that the system of asking the head of household to list voters on one form was not fit for purpose and that is why one of the important changes in the change-over to Individual Elector registration (IER) is that each potential voter is now responsible for registering themselves.
Mark Williams attended the committee in his capacity as Electoral Registration Officer for East Devon, along with his Mid Devon counterpart, Kevin Finan. Mr Williams maintains that his decision to focus on data-matching as a means of capturing missing voters was the most pragmatic solution to the task of raising the percentage of voters registered.
He and Mr Finan told the committee that in interpreting the rules governing electoral registration methodology, they had used their best judgment to deliver the most effective electoral registration percentage for their constituency.
East Devon now has a pool of 25 canvassers, who will carry out household visits between 28 October and 28 November this year. The majority of those appointed have resulted from an internal advertisement among EDDC staff.
A previous external advertisement did not prove successful in recruiting the necessary numbers and so the remuneration was increased and the opportunity promoted within the council and via parish clerks. By the time the message to parish clerks had been sent, the necessary number had been recruited internally.
On Cabinet Office advice, East Devon's register was 'cleansed' in readiness for the new IER system. The 'old' list was retained and, though dormant, was run in parallel with the new list. Whilst 6,000 voters who had not returned forms were taken off the list prior to the Euro elections in May 2014, individuals who arrived at a polling station and who turned out to have been on the previous list were allowed to vote. There was a 41% turnout at that election – one of the highest in the country (34% nationally).
Kevin Finan, Chief Executive of Mid Devon council said:
"The accusations related to 2011-2013, during which time there was no legal requirement to carry out door to door canvassing. The decision on whether to employ such methods was left to individual ERO's to decide as they felt appropriate. There was therefore no law breaking. We actually achieved better results through using more efficient methods of data matching than we did when we employed canvassers to knock on doors.
From 2014 the legal position has changed and we need to send someone to every household where we have not had a response to our issue of notices and letters."
