Voter ID is a risky reform when 8m people are already missing from the electoral register

In a 2018 pilot, voters in a few areas will have to show some sort of identification at the polls – a major change to voting arrangements. Yet voter fraud is not widespread in the UK. Toby S James welcomes the fact the plans will be extensively piloted, but warns they will lead to more voters being turned away from polling stations. What’s more, they come at a time when eight million Britons are already missing from the electoral roll

Building Better Elections: the Role of Human Resource Management Practices

Organising an election is a huge logistical challenge which involves the recruitment and management of an enormous workforce. Despite the many well-run elections, it is no surprise that electoral integrity is often undermined by individual errors, poorly designed management systems or the poor use of technology (James 2014, forthcoming; Montjoy 2008; Norris 2015). Yet there is very little information about the staff that run elections and the recruitment, training and management practices in place. This paper provides a provisional analysis of the first ever international surveys of electoral management bodies (n=85) and electoral officials (n=1,868). Firstly, it provides new information about the workforce sizes, before profiling the demographic and educational characteristics of personnel within 33 electoral management bodies. Secondly, it describes the human resource management practices (HRMP) that are used and the experiences of employees. Thirdly, after developing hypotheses from the human resource management literature, it tests for the effects of these on electoral management body performance. On balance, initial analysis suggests that HRMP such as recruitment and training can have small effects on performance. Strong evidence was found showing the close relationships between employee outcomes such as stress, work overload and job satisfaction, but the link to performance was weak with the exception of propensity to quit. Other notable findings included significant gender biases within EMB workforces

Are UK elections conducted with integrity, with sufficient turnout?

Across the world, there are many countries where elections take place but are rigged by governments or unfairly conducted. And even in core liberal democracies (like the United States) political parties have now become deeply involved in gerrymandering constituencies and partisan efforts at ‘voter suppression’. As part of our 2018 Democratic Audit, Toby S James looks at how well elections are run in the UK, and whether the systems for registering voters and encouraging turnout are operating effectively and fairly

The cost of elections: the effects of public sector austerity on electoral integrity and voter engagement

Concerns have been raised that insufficient funding has been affecting the delivery of elections in many countries. This paper presents a case study of England and Wales from 2010–2016. It demonstrates that many local authorities saw major real terms cuts and were increasingly over-budget. Those subject to cuts were less likely to undertake public engagement activities. State efforts to encourage voter participation may therefore be a casualty of austerity

So much for #pencilgate: the referendum wasn’t rigged – but Britain’s electoral machinery needs fine-tuning

Despite widespread fears to the contrary, the EU referendum passed off without major problems. But the vote revealed underlying problems with Britain’s electoral system – most notably the difficulty of registering to vote. Toby S James and Alistair Clark, authors of a new report by the Electoral Commission on the quality of electoral administration at the referendum, say the burden on cash-strapped officials is growing. Indeed, nearly half of local authorities say they don’t have enough funding to maintain the electoral register

The higher education impact agenda, scientific realism and policy change: the case of electoral integrity in Britain

Pressures have increasingly been put upon social scientists to prove their economic, cultural and social value through ‘impact agendas’ in higher education. There has been little conceptual and empirical discussion of the challenges involved in achieving impact and the dangers of evaluating it, however. This article argues that a critical realist approach to social science can help to identify some of these key challenges and the institutional incompatibilities between impact regimes and university research in free societies. These incompatibilities are brought out through an autobiographical ‘insider-account’ of trying to achieve impact in the field of electoral integrity in Britain. The article argues that there is a more complex relationship between research and the real world which means that the nature of knowledge might change as it becomes known by reflexive agents. Secondly, the researchers are joined into social relations with a variety of actors, including those who might be the object of study in their research. Researchers are often weakly positioned in these relations. Some forms of impact, such as achieving policy change, are therefore exceptionally difficult as they are dependent on other actors. Strategies for trying to achieve impact are drawn out such as collaborating with civil society groups and parliamentarians to lobby for policy change

Cyber Elections in the Digital Age: Threats and opportunities of technology for electoral integrity

Elections are essential for delivering democratic rule, in which ultimate power should reside in the citizens of a state. This introduction argues that the management and contestation of elections have now entered a qualitative new historical period because of the combined development of new technology and broader sociological developments. The era of cyber-elections is marked by: a) the new ontological existence of the digital b) new flows of data and communication c) the rapid acceleration of pace in communications d) the commodification of electoral data and e) an expansion of actors involved in elections. These provide opportunities for state actors to incorporate technology into the electoral process to improve make democratic goals more realisable. But it also poses major threats to into the running of elections as the activities of actors and potential mismanagement of the electoral process could undermine democratic ideals such as political equality and popular control of government. The article argues that this new era therefore requires proactive interventions into electoral law and the re-writing of international standards to keep pace with societal and technological change