6.The Working Party on Electoral Procedures, a group chaired by the then Home Office Minister, George Howarth, and containing representatives from the main political parties, local government and electoral administrators, published its final report on 19 October 1999 - House of Commons Official Report, col WA434 (though it had published its summary recommendations in July of that year).
7.The Act gives effect to the Working Party's recommendations.
8.Those recommendations fall into several main categories.
9.The Working Party recommended the introduction of a scheme of "rolling" electoral registration to enable people to be added to (and deleted from) the electoral register at any time of the year rather than making registration contingent on residence on a single annual qualifying date.
10.The Working Party recommended changes to electoral registration rules to make it easier for the homeless, remand prisoners, people in mental institutions and service personnel to register. The Working Party recommended that the homeless, remand prisoners and mental patients should be able to register by means of a "declaration of locality", that is a statement that they have a significant link with a locality.
11.Under the existing law, remand prisoners are entitled to vote but should they be in prison on the electoral registration qualifying date are unable to register. The Working Party recommended that remand prisoners should be entitled to register by means of a declaration of locality, in respect of the address at which they were previously living or in respect of the institution at which they are held. The Working Party did not recommend extending the franchise to convicted prisoners.
12.The Working Party recommended that those in mental institutions, whether voluntary or detained patients (other than those detained as a consequence of criminal acts), should be able to register by means of a declaration of locality, in respect of the institution in which they are resident or in respect of the address where they would otherwise be living.
13.The Working Party recommended that members of the armed forces, and their families, should be able to register at their home addresses rather than solely by means of a service declaration.
14.The Working Party recommended that, in order to comply with data protection principles and the EU Data Protection Directive, the public should be informed as to the uses to which the electoral register might be put and allowed to opt out of being included in the register that is available for sale. A full version of the register would still be produced and used for electoral and law enforcement purposes and made available for local inspection.
15.In relation to absent voting the Working Party recommended that applications not on the standard form or made by fax should be acceptable, that an application for an absent vote at a particular election should apply to all elections on the same day and that the grounds for late applications should be widened to include family bereavement or illness or unforeseen employment commitments. The Working Party also recommended that it should be possible to return postal votes to a polling station and that postal votes should be treated as valid even if not returned in the official envelope, or if the ballot paper and declaration of identity were returned separately.
16.The Working Party recommended that returning officers should be given discretion to replace lost or spoilt postal ballot papers and to issue them other than by post. It also recommended that a postal vote should be available to anyone who applied for one without having to satisfy any particular criteria.
17.The Working Party recommended that pilot schemes of innovative electoral procedures - such as weekend voting, electronic voting, early voting, mobile polling stations - should be run so that their effectiveness could be evaluated and that the successful ones should be rolled out more widely.
18.The Working Party recommended that large print versions of the ballot paper should be displayed in polling stations and that templates should be available to assist blind and partially sighted voters. It also recommended that the facility to be assisted by a companion should be extended from blind voters to other categories of voters who would benefit from it.
19.The creation of an offence of supplying false particulars on a nomination form does not arise from a recommendation of the Working Party. Rather, it is a response to the realisation that candidates who do supply false particulars are not, under the existing law, committing an offence.
Background