12 March 2004
Uncertainty surrounding this June's postal vote election pilots has left the councils organising them with potentially serious procurement problems.
The government wants all-postal voting for European and local elections in the Northeast, Northwest, East Midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber.
But with final regulations not yet available, problems are looming with procurement of paper, print, envelopes and postal capacity, an inquiry by MPs heard on March 9.
The committee that monitors the ODPM heard from East Midlands regional returning officer Roger Morris that the regulations were needed 'months ago'.
'It is a question of time and scale,' he said. 'There are procurement issues and with 94 days to go we are into the last possible stages and there is no room for anything to go wrong.'
He said that there were only a few printers in the country capable of printing the complex ballot papers needed for the European elections with the necessary security and quality.
Morris said that returning officers would ask the Department for Constitutional Affairs to indemnify them against the cost of re-running any postal pilots that go wrong.
The committee had earlier heard from Electoral Commission chair Sam Younger that he thought the government was wrong to insist on postal voting in four regions. 'Four regions is 37% of the electorate of England and does not take account of the complexity of elections,' he said.
The committee also quizzed witnesses on the security of postal ballots. Younger said that there had been a demonstrable increase in turnouts and that secrecy concerns could be met by moving to a system of individual, rather than household, registration.
PFmar2004
