Recommissioning the Commission

[Filuwaúrdjan]

From Normal Mouth:

<sup>Charles Falconer deserves credit today for causing last year’s excellent report by the Committee on Standards in Public Life on the work of the Electoral Commission to be revisited.

The 2000 Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act (PPERA) that gave birth to the Electoral Commission is flawed in a number of ways, many of which are picked up by the Committee. In its dealing with parties the Commission often gives the impression that their primary purposes are collaboratively to assist it in fulfilling its awareness-raising and turnout-boosting objectives, rather than to win power competitively, i.e to the detriment of one another. I once had a encounter related to me in which Commission staff greeted with incomprehension one party official’s assertion that he actually liked low turnout, provided that the voters staying at home were disproportionately those inclined to vote for his opponents. Fortunately, the Committee recognised the unsuitability of the Commission to carry out this work, at least while discharging its other duties, and recommended this responsibility should be removed. Hopefully the government will take heed.

The dissonance in outlook between regulator and regulated is a function of another systemic flaw highlighted by the Committee. It is a requirement of the Act that nobody who has been a party office-bearer, employee or donor in the last ten years may work for the Commission. These requirements effectively disbar anyone with a detailed knowledge of the operation of the political parties they are supposed to oversee. It would be like excluding anyone with a background in journalism from becoming a press officer. The Commission’s CEO Peter Wardle says that he is comfortable with that restriction being relaxed for staff as per the Committee’s recommendation, but urges care when extending it to Commissioners. This is still too cautious. Our democracy allows declared supporters of political parties to assume highly influential roles in the media on the understanding that they will leave their own politics at the office door. I cannot see why we cannot insist on the same of Electoral Commissioners.

Lord Falconer says that the Electoral Commission urgently needs new powers to investigate breaches of electoral law, along similar lines to the HSE, rather than obliging the police to deal with such matters. That may be right, but before that can be done the right staff with the right focus have to be recruited, and that can only happen when the Committee’s recommendations are implemented.</sup>