Wednesday 14 November 2012

How could the PCC elections have been better run?

The UK is having its first elections for Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) tomorrow, (Thursday 15th November). Citizens will have the chance to elect an official who will have the powers to:
  • appoint and dismiss chief constables
  • set out a five-year police and crime plan 
  • determine local policing priorities
Teresa May has claimed that they will 'be a voice for local people'.  Perhaps, perhaps not.  However, there is a real concern that their democratic role will be undermined by low turnout.  So what could have been done?  

Ways increase turnout - lessons from academic research

Low turnout is a problem because elected Commissioners may not be representative of broader public opinion.  It also reduces the legitimacy of Commissioners and perhaps their effectiveness too.

In some senses, low turnout would not be a surprise because voter turnout is generally lower in 'second order' and 'third order' elections.  Citizens vote in elections that they consider to be more important, such as general elections.  Turnout would probably have been low, whatever.

However, based on established academic research government could have done much more to avoid low turnout.  It could have:
  • Hold the election at the weekend, not a Thursday.  Why?
    • Some democracies hold elections at weekends and research suggests that this helps turnout.
  • Better still, allow voting over several days.  Why?
    • As the US election showed, many US states allow voting weeks in advance.  Why not allow voting to take place over several days?  Research shows how this can improve turnout.
  • Provide more information about candidates. Why? 
    • As I said before, research shows that providing free-post leaflets to candidates helps boost turnout.  The government decided against this and instead set up a website.  This is problematic because a significant amount of the UK still doesn't have internet access.  A telephone line for the public has been set up, but it has received criticisms.
  • Hold the elections in May.  Why?
    • November is a bad time for electoral officials who are busy updating the electoral register.  This means that they their resources are drained and they cannot invest in public awareness activities, as they might at other points in the year.  I interviewed many electoral administrators and they were concerned about a November election.
    • More importantly, research shows that combining elections can help boost turnout.  If elections were combined with local or other elections in May, turnout might have been much higher.  Ideally, combine it with a general election.
    • There have been some claims that November's 'early and dark nights' reduce turnout, I'm not aware of any research that demonstrates this.  But please correct me if I'm wrong.  
  • Plan better.
    • Research shows that errors made in the way that elections are run, voters' interactions with poll workers etc., can undermine confidence.  The Electoral Commission issued some early warnings that planning had not progressed sufficiently at the earlier stages.  There are some reports of leaflets not being delivered on time, problems with the telephone helpful for voters and confusion about who can and cannot be a candidate.  Some teething problems are inevitable, but they might have been avoided, and won't help turnout and public trust.
Electing Commissioners on the Cheap

The bottom line seems to be that the election could have been improved if more was spent on running it. Understandably, the government will be keen to keep costs down.   Primarily, they will be concerned about arguments from the Labour Party that the money spent on the election could have been spent on more police officers.

However, if we are to have PCCs then it is important that they are not elected on the cheap.  It undermines the eventual Commissioners, it undermines the police, and it undermines democracy

6 comments:

  1. Interested in your reference to early voting and evidence that it can increase turnout. I thought the evidence from the trials in the UK was pretty conclusive - well-tested and results were consistently that it made very little difference to turnout.

    Are you reading that UK evidence differently?

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  2. The UK pilots suggested that it could, although the increases were relatively small. A range of 0.2 to 3.7% percentage points (see: http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/elj.2009.0059). Not huge, but something.

    US studies suggested a 3 percentage point rise where early voting is available.

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  3. Do you have a copy of that reference which doesn't cost me $51 to view by any chance...?

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  4. Of course! Remind me of your email address and I'll send over a copy!

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  5. Thanks Toby! I'm mark.pack@gmail.com

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  6. A correction to myself: ....the range of 0.2 to 3.7% cited above refers to the proportion of the voters who cast their vote in the extended hours. Surveys suggested that about half of those using those additional hours said that they would have voted anyway.

    How much did turnout rise as a result of the extended hours in the pilots? Only a very little amount, it seems. However, this might be a result of low publicity. If early voting was permanently available for UK elections, we might speculate, that the effect would be greater because it would be the 'norm'. As suggested above, the US studies suggest that a 2-3 percentage point increase is possible.

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