Hansard

The Convener SNP

Agenda item 4 is an evidence session on the follow-up from the Scottish local government elections in 2012. I welcome Mary Pitcaithly, convener of the Electo...

Mary Pitcaithly (Electoral Management Board for Scotland)

No. There is nothing that I think that I need to take up the committee’s time with this morning. We are happy to answer any questions.

The Convener SNP

Thank you very much. Obviously, there were lessons that needed to be learned from the 2012 local government elections, as there always are, although there we...

Mary Pitcaithly

The 2012 election was very successful. I am not talking from the point of view of the politicians, who might not have got the result that they wanted, but fr...

The Convener SNP

In relation to those different voting systems and the use of the single transferable vote system for local government elections, can you remind us how many s...

Mary Pitcaithly

The number of spoiled papers has been reducing gradually at every election. We always have an eye to that and to the need for voter education. We work very c...

The Convener SNP

Does Mr Highcock have the figure?

Chris Highcock (Electoral Management Board for Scotland)

I do not have the statistics with me now, but I can certainly pass them on after the meeting via the clerk.

The Convener SNP

Thank you. You talked about education. How do we ensure that staff at polling stations are trained to ensure that they can help voters, using the most simpl...

Mary Pitcaithly

Nobody can work at a polling station unless they have been through a proper training course with us. That normally happens in the week before polling day, so...

Chris Highcock

The process is that every polling clerk and presiding officer goes to a face-to-face session with trainers and people from the elections team who are deliver...

The Convener SNP

Electronic counting often poses difficulty for party activists because they cannot see what is going on, and it causes particular problems when it comes to c...

Mary Pitcaithly

I will deal with the point about e-counting, and maybe Mr Highcock can deal with the issue about fraud, particularly in relation to absent voting. We have n...

The Convener SNP

I would like to ask about postal voting in that regard. There must obviously be a match-up of signatures, and if there is doubt they go to individual invigil...

Chris Highcock

You are talking about the integrity of the postal voting process. As you point out, that is reliant on the verification of signatures and dates of birth on t...

Mary Pitcaithly

I have not heard that either, but if somebody does feel that it is all happening too quickly and that people are getting into a rhythm or a process whereby t...

Chris Highcock

It is always our intention to include votes rather than to exclude them. There is a tension between making the process inclusive and ensuring that the system...

The Convener SNP

Okay. We could probably have a debate about that as well, but let us not go there at present.

Mary Pitcaithly

Could I just add one small thing? The electoral registration officer is now entitled to write to somebody whose vote has been rejected, and I have found that...

The Convener SNP

Thank you—that is useful.

John Wilson Ind

The issue of spoiled ballot papers in local government elections always comes up because of what happened in 2007. I have done some anorak analysis of the si...

Mary Pitcaithly

Yes.

John Wilson Ind

And it is quite clear that the numbers are reducing.

Mary Pitcaithly

Yes, absolutely. We had a relatively small number of spoiled papers in 2011-12, and certainly much fewer than in 2007. Voters were using the system for the s...

John Wilson Ind

My follow-up question concerns the number of papers that are deliberately spoiled, not the papers on which people have put an X instead of a 1 or a 2. I have...

Mary Pitcaithly

We are always looking for the voter’s intention, and if the intention is clear we would allow the vote to be counted. It is only where the intention is not c...

John Wilson Ind

Have you seen an increase in the number of requests for absent or postal vote applications, or has that remained constant?

Mary Pitcaithly

There has been a constant increase.

Chris Highcock

The increase was particularly marked in the lead-up to the independence referendum in 2014, in which the proportion of postal votes grew dramatically. As a c...

John Wilson Ind

That goes back to the convener’s question about people going into the polling station and polling clerks—as Mr Highcock mentioned—indicating to them that the...