WEDNESDAY 2 APRIL 2003

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

  40. How many incomplete applications have you received which you have not put into the system?
  (Mr Cassidy) I could not be accurate on that. I do not know.

  41. It is 51,000-odd take away the 35,000-odd.
  (Mr Cassidy) No, the number of cards issued is 35,709.

  42. So it is about 16,000.
  (Mr Cassidy) No, of the completed applications received, 37,000 have been issued as cards, but a number of applications have been received which were incomplete and which our systems did not record.

  43. That would not be the difference between 235,000 and 51,000, but it would run into tens of thousands.
  (Mr Cassidy) No. The rejection rate on applications runs at around 22%. It is very high. We estimated when we set the contract that it might run to 10%. We currently have in that limbo, which is in rejection mode and which we are trying to sort out, something around 6,800 cards and in process, that is applications which have been received as complete but for which cards have not been issued, are some 9,380.

  44. Those figures would only include those young people who have had the opportunity to register and would not include those who have not even registered to vote.
  (Mr Cassidy) Some of the applications will be complete and when we go to validate those applications we find that they are not on the register. We then send them a rolling registration form, but we do not keep a check on the number of people who apply for a card and then have to apply for the register.

  45. Is there a general acceptance of the Committee's concern as to why such high numbers of young voters have not registered and/or are not in a position to participate in the forthcoming elections?
  (Mr Stanley) Is there a concern? Of course there is concern. We want to get the register as complete as possible and if we could find people who have not registered, we should be very anxious to get them onto the register, indeed the Electoral Commission have been running a fairly expensive television and newspaper campaign to ensure that people are made aware that they need to apply if they have not already done so. We are very anxious that those who should be on the register are indeed brought onto the register.

  46. Does the Electoral Office have any other plans to try to increase the number of young people on the register?
  (Mr Stanley) We have no specific plans which are targeted at young people at the moment. Our real aim is to get all those people who are not on the register on as quickly and as completely as we can. I do not think we are particularly trying to focus on any one group, but we are very anxious to ensure that if there is a particular deficit with young people that that is addressed. We are very anxious to take forward any briefings we can with schools and colleges to ensure that young people do come on.

  47. You have already touched upon this subject in some of your earlier answers. In diverse political submissions to us it has been stated, alleged, whatever, that there are some areas which definitely only had a postal communication; some areas did not have a canvassing commitment. How widespread was that? What were the reasons for it, what element was there of the difficulty of recruiting staff to canvass in particular areas?
  (Mr Stanley) You are quite right, there were several wards where we were unable to get canvassers. There was only one ward for which we were unable to find any canvasser; the other wards had a percentage ranging from 20% canvassed by post to 70% canvassed by post. We had 16 wards, one of which we canvassed entirely by post and another 15 who had a proportion of their area canvassed by post. It was simply that we could not find anyone in that area who was public spirited enough to take on the work, to go out and canvass in their own area. Some areas I may perhaps describe as difficult areas and people were unwilling to go into them. In other areas there just seemed to be no-one prepared to come forward. In fact it only amounted to something like 1.5% of the total electorate canvassed by post. It was not a very large percentage at all.

  48. Was it merely an urban phenomenon, if you can call it a phenomenon?
  (Mr Stanley) No, it ranged right across the province. There were some in the city, some outside. Perhaps it was predominantly an urban problem, but it ranged right across.

  49. I am slightly puzzled. In your earlier response you indicated that only one electoral ward had difficulty and now you say it ranged right across.
  (Mr Stanley) One ward was entirely canvassed by post. Another 15 wards were partially canvassed by post.

  50. Were they not all canvassed by post?
  (Mr Stanley) No.

  51. Do you mean they were not canvassed by persons?
  (Mr Stanley) The 15 wards were partly canvassed by post and partly canvassed by canvassers.
  (Ms Butler) May I explain? When our canvassers are appointed, they are appointed to a specific area and normally those areas are one half or one third of an electoral ward. Our problem was that we simply could not recruit enough canvassers to cover all the areas. In some electoral wards two thirds of those may have been canvassed by canvassers in the normal way, but the third where we could not get anyone appointed would have been canvassed by post. There was only one ward in South Down for which we could not find canvassers by any means.

  52. I think you could supply the canvassers privately, but that is another story. When you saw the numbers and figures coming back to you, was there any correlation between the difficulty in the door-to-door canvassing and the final result of your registration process? Were they linked to low turnouts?
  (Mr Stanley) I could not speak for the turnouts. There was a correlation between those wards which were canvassed by post and a lower response than we would have wished and that is why we then followed those up with a further letter. We followed up every single person who failed to respond to us, whether they were in one of those wards or elsewhere, by post in November with a further personalised application form and set of notes and return envelope asking them to complete the registration form.
  (Ms Butler) The earlier returns from the wards or parts of wards canvassed by post were quite interesting. It was a lower return by post in the urban wards, but the same level of return in the rural wards as the canvassers were getting. Then all the wards were canvassed again by post to the non-responders in early November, as the Chief Electoral Officer has just said.
  (Mr Stanley) I should like to say that it was not our intention that any ward would be canvassed by post. We believe that a personal canvass is the right way to go about it. We believe that we get a better response, we believe that we can offer the electorate more by way of explanations and facilities to help them. We would not intend a postal canvass anywhere except by necessity.

  53. Has there been a sharp decline in registrations in a particular area of West Belfast?
  (Mr Stanley) Yes. We included with our memorandum some material about the responses. In West Belfast, overall in the whole constituency, we had an 81% response rate from our canvass, which of course is 10% lower than everywhere else. Some wards within West Belfast were quite low: Twinbrook, Poleglass, Kilwee, Collin Glen, Clonard and Falls wards all had around 70%, which was disappointing.

  54. It has been suggested that residents in the constituency were left off the new register despite having completed forms and handed them to the canvasser. Is there any evidence of that?
  (Mr Stanley) None whatsoever. If there is any evidence, or any suggestion that anything like that has gone on, we should be very keen to know about it because we can tie the individual canvasser back to the particular ward or street. If there were a problem, we would be very anxious to know about it so that we can take some action.

  55. It is not an issue and no problem exists anywhere as far as your office is concerned, around people who claim to have handed in registration forms either by post or handing them to the canvasser. You are not aware of any problem in that direction.
  (Mr Stanley) They have not come to us by any means.
  (Ms Butler) There has been no comment of that sort whatever. Every form which arrived in our office by our final date prior to processing for the register at the end of November was processed.

  56. If there were supporting documentation, you would want to know about it, would you?
  (Mr Stanley) Absolutely.
  (Ms Butler) Absolutely.

  57. Is it correct that people who have failed to turn up for electoral hearings have simply been struck off?
  (Mr Stanley) May I ask June to take that as the person with the greatest knowledge on electoral hearings?
  (Ms Butler) People who are called to electoral hearings are invited to attend because the registration officer has to be satisfied of the veracity of their application. If they do not attend a hearing or if they attend a hearing and do not bring sufficient evidence, their application to go onto the electoral register is refused. It is not a question of being struck off, it is a question of them not actually getting on.

  58. How many individuals have been excluded on the grounds of not showing up at a hearing or, having shown up at a hearing, not having had convincing evidence with them?
  (Ms Butler) Rolling registration hearings have been held since the middle of December. Over 33,000 rolling registration forms have been received in that period, of those, 5,390 person have been called to hearings. As a result of those hearings, either those people coming themselves or them being represented 2,240-ish have been added to the register, that is 42%.

  59. Represented by whom?
  (Ms Butler) They can be represented by anyone. They can be represented by a family member or they can be represented by an individual from a political party. The important thing is that the registration officer has to be satisfied that they are a bona fide person and that they are eligible to go onto the register. If someone represents someone else, they have to bring a letter of authority with them from that person, signed, so we can check the signature. Also they have to bring evidence that they live where they say they are living and that they have lived there for three months.