Founding Father of Modern Democracy an insult to Banana Republics

The Times
April 25, 2005

We insult banana republics
Michael Pinto-Duschinsky

THE JUDGE’S remark that the corrupt practices revealed in the Birmingham voting fraud case would disgrace a banana republic is unfair on many banana republics. It conceals the fact that postal voting is only one of several defects in the mechanisms of British electoral administration and thus of British democracy.

For all the protestations of the police, the Birmingham frauds are the tip of an iceberg. All the major parties have been guilty. In Birmingham and Blackburn it is Labour; in Hackney it was Conservatives and Lib Dems.

1. There is a deep-rooted culture of complacency. In 2001 a friend innocently went to the town hall to sign a postal voting form for her husband. The electoral officer said she was disobeying the law but added: “Go ahead. I’m not looking.”

2. The new Electoral Commission lacks authority to supervise returning officers.

3. Britain has no counterpart to the US Justice Department’s unit that specialises in the prosecution of electoral offences. Whitehall has consistently refused to carry out its enforcement duties. The police wait for complaints but rarely, if ever, initiate investigations.

4. My research for the Home Office in 1986 revealed six million errors on the electoral register. Apparently, things have hardly improved.

5. There is some gross malapportionment of seats. Why does the Isle of Wight have the same number of seats (one) as Orkney and Shetland, with one fifth of its population?

6. The political parties collude in ignoring the legal limits on campaign spending. Since 1924 no MP has lost his or her seat for exceeding the legal maximum. (Thailand and South Korea have better enforcement records.)

7. The worst problems are yet to come. Senior election officials privately acknowledge that the rules for the referendum on the European constitution were hastily devised and will prove almost impossible to administer fairly.

After the Third Reform Act of 1885, parliamentary elections were delayed for months so that preparations could be made to ensure that they were properly conducted. We should have postponed the election rather than relied on finger-in-the-dyke improvisations.

Michael Pinto-Duschinsky is the author
of Electoral Administration in the United Kingdom