Written evidence from the Electoral Commission (PCC01)
Dear Mr Davies
Thank you for giving Rhydian Thomas and me the opportunity to give evidence to your Committee on Monday 19 July. I have set out below the further information we agreed to provide in follow-up to some of the responses we gave at the session.
At the session on Monday, you enquired about the cost of delivering a booklet to all households in Wales. As Rhydian mentioned, the Electoral Commission sent a voter information booklet to all households across Wales (1,361,609) before the elections in May, and the total cost of this was £152,132.08 including VAT. This is broken down below-
In 2012, the UK Government estimated that the cost of sending PCC candidate mailing to all households across England and Wales would be up to £35 million, so rejected it on the basis of cost. At the time, the Commission challenged this figure and suggested ways of reducing the costs involved, such as producing one booklet for each police area with statements from each candidate, rather than giving each individual candidate a separate mailing.
Based on our understanding of door drop costs, we said at the time that £9-10 million would be a more reasonable estimate of the cost to produce 41 different versions (for each police area) of a 16-page centralised booklet containing candidate details that could be sent via addressed mail to every household.
I also said at the session that I would send you more information about our research into voter confusion when completing multiple ballot papers. After the elections in May 2015, we carried out a public opinion survey, as we do after all electoral events, and asked those who said they had voted in both the UK Parliamentary General Election and local elections how easy or difficult they found it to fill in different ballot papers on the same day for different elections. The results are laid out below-
Very Easy | - 81% |
Fairly Easy | - 13% |
Neither easy nor difficult | - 2% |
Fairly difficult | - 2% |
Very difficult | - 1% |
We commissioned further surveying of five areas where there were also mayoral elections, including Bedford where some voters participated in up to seven polls. When asked how easy or difficult they found it to fill in different ballot papers on the same day for different, the respondents replied as laid out below-
Very Easy | - 73% |
Fairly Easy | - 19% |
Neither easy nor difficult | - 5% |
Fairly difficult | - 3% |
Very difficult | - 1% |
I hope this additional information is useful. If you have any further questions, please contact Mazida Khatun in our Public Affairs team.
Yours sincerely
Director of Electoral Administration
21 July 2016