WEDNESDAY 2 APRIL 2003

MR DENIS A STANLEY, MRS JUNE BUTLER, MR MICHAEL CASSIDY AND MR GEOFF NEAL

  20. You have been talking fairly confidently, but you have no benchmark by which to assess.
  (Mr Stanley) It is perhaps a benchmark of not having a large number of people or disabled groups or representative groups coming to us and saying there is a problem. We have no indication that there is a problem.

  Reverend Smyth: Perhaps we shall have to ask some of the folk who have provided evidence to get in touch with you on that.

  21. Looking at first time and young voters, you mentioned earlier that you thought apathy, particular among young voters, could be a problem and why they were not filling in the forms. There was and there has been concern from some of the political parties regarding the fact that maybe these young people never received the form in the first place and therefore that is the reason they did not fill it out. If that is the case, what are you doing to rectify that situation to ensure that group is fairly reflective?
  (Ms Butler) May I first address the question of them not getting the forms? You will appreciate that when the canvassers were visiting they had with them preprinted forms for those people who had been on the register before. However, the canvassers were instructed at training and frequently on their visits to the area electoral offices that when they made contact with any house on the first visit or the return visit, the collection visit, they should specifically ask about young people who would be of the age to come onto the register, the 17 to 18-year-olds. We realised and have always realised that was going to be a problem when we moved from the household form where they were previously put on by a parent. Our canvassers were instructed to request information about those young people and they carried with them blank forms for easy distribution. At the same time, there was the ongoing publicity campaign, so we hoped that would make young people aware. Post registration it became evident that perhaps there was a lower uptake or a lower number of people on the register who would be considered attainers, the people going on with the date of birth prefix. After Christmas we organised a campaign, we ourselves designed the poster, the Electoral Commission were doing something similar but we designed a poster which we sent directly to every college in Northern Ireland, to every university campus and to every post-primary school as well as to councils, asking them to put it in community centres and they were also sent out through the citizen's advice bureaux. We hoped that would be an attractive poster which would be eye catching for young people. We targeted them in that way. We also had articles in magazines such as the magazine in Northern Ireland called Young People in Action and citizen's advice bureaux were very conscious that this was an area which had to be targeted. The Chief Electoral Officer and others gave interviews on television and on radio and the local radios where we hoped young people would be listening to target that age group. You are right in that this is a traditional problem of apathy among young people and they are also a bit averse to filling in forms; it is something we have to recognise is a problem. I know the universities are very keen and have been very keen to target that area and we have been willing to go along and distribute forms if requested.
  (Mr Stanley) There is a problem in the sense that we have no source of knowing the details of young people who attain the age of 18; we do not get information for instance from the Social Security Agency or whatever. We have no way of individually targeting young people who have reached the age of 18.
  (Ms Butler) We shall no doubt be moving on to the electoral ID card. It is interesting that there has been some indication that when young people are trying to get the ID card—and they are trying perhaps to get it for other reasons to prove that they are 18 or over—there is some carry-forward interest into the area of registration and some of the rolling registration applications have come about because of young people trying to get ID cards.

  22. Either because of apathy or for other reasons, is that uniform across Northern Ireland or are there some areas where it is more of a problem?
  (Ms Butler) No, it seems to be uniform in every area.
  (Mr Stanley) I think it is also prevalent in Great Britain as well as in Northern Ireland. It is a recognised problem.

  23. I was more interested to know whether there were certain areas where it was more of a problem than others.
  (Ms Butler) No, it does not appear so.

  24. The difference in Great Britain is that if there were a problem and an election registration officer wanted to, he at least gets warning that a young person is coming on because the head of the family says this person is 17 and will be 18 next year. You do not do that any more.
  (Mr Stanley) We cannot because it is an individual registration; we have gone away from the family registration form and it is all individual registration. There is no opportunity for the head of the household to alert us other than getting in touch and letting us know.

  25. Could you not put a question on the form to ask whether there is anyone in the house who is going to be 18?
  (Mr Stanley) The form is prescribed by legislation.

  26. You have no choice.
  (Mr Stanley) We have no choice.

  27. You said that there was no difference in registrations of young people across Northern Ireland in terms of the figures of those failing to register.
  (Ms Butler) We have not looked at that as an area. We have looked at it generally. There would not appear to be any difference. May I say that about four per cent of the electorate are attainers with dates of birth and those are fairly evenly spread?

  28. If I were to say to you that the Committee has received information that in the constituencies of Newry/Armagh, West Tyrone and West Belfast the numbers of young people registering for the first time have dropped in a range of between 50 to 80%, would you be surprised at that figure?
  (Mr Stanley) I do not have that in front of me. I do not know where that came from. I do not think we have those figures. We would not know. If we knew where the young people were and who they were, we would certainly be pursuing them.

  29. You would know how many young people registered for the first time from the old register.
  (Mr Stanley) We would have known on the old register people who were going to attain the age of 18, though the previous register did not have the date of birth.

  Mr Clarke: No; who had actually registered for the first time. You would know that because they would have registered.

  Chairman: But they could have moved.

  30. The point I make is that in all previous electoral rolls and published registers there would be an indication of the number of new registrations and it is not hard to compare that figure with the number of new registrations in constituencies this time.
  (Mr Stanley) We only now know everyone's date of birth; previously we did not have dates of birth except for those people who were under 18 and who would attain the age of 18 during the currency of the register.

  31. So attainers, first time registrations, the young people we are talking about here, would you be surprised?
  (Ms Butler) Yes, we know those people who are attainers. About 4% of our register are people who are attainers and that is slightly down. What I said was that I was not aware that there was any particular area where it was more down than any other.

  32. It is a huge area of concern for me and many other people that there are such high numbers, potentially a 50 to 80% drop, in the number of young people registering for the first time in some constituencies. I believe that the reasons go beyond apathy. You mentioned a publicity campaign. Could you confirm that the publicity campaign was supposed to have started in July 2002 but did not take place until September 2002, a week before your canvassers arrived on the doorstep?
  (Mr Stanley) The publicity was taken forward by the Electoral Commission, not by us. The responsibility for voter awareness was taken off us some years ago and passed to the Electoral Commission.

  33. I am sure we can ask them that, but you did just show a poster which you had produced.
  (Mr Stanley) That was our own.
  (Ms Butler) When we realised that there was an area of concern and it was only at 4% across the province, we took the initiative to do that and roll it out directly to schools and colleges, which was something the Commission said they could not do.

  34. Was that after the first register?
  (Ms Butler) Yes, it was.

  35. Why could the Commission not do it? Did they give you a reason?
  (Ms Butler) Because they had another publicity campaign which was tied in with the full publicity across Northern Ireland and they were not planning to target schools and colleges specifically, which was what we wanted to do.

  36. A high number of those young voters would potentially be applying for photographic identification because of their lack of other types of identification for the polling station.
  (Ms Butler) Yes; exactly.

  37. Information we have received says that of the 233,000 requests for photographic identification, recently only as many as 45,000 of those have been processed. Could you give an up-to-date figure of how many of the 233,000 requests have actually been processed?
  (Mr Stanley) May I ask Mr Cassidy to take that as he is the project leader for the electoral identity card?
  (Mr Cassidy) At lunchtime today 51,945 complete applications had been received. Of those, 35,709 cards have been issued. In effect something just over 235,000 people ticked the box in the end. It was 231,000 when the December register was published, but a number of electoral registration forms received after 1 December were included in the January and February registers.

  38. Let me get this right. There were 235,000 people who ticked the box.
  (Mr Cassidy) Yes; for registration.
  (Ms Butler) For registration.

  39. Over 51,000 have been processed.
  (Mr Cassidy) There have been 51,945 completed applications received; quite a lot of the applications we received were not complete in that they did not supply all the information required and they do not go into the system until they are complete. Almost 52,000 applications have been received. However, there is no cross-reference between those applications and the people who ticked the box.