Postal voting puts underfunded UK electoral system at risk of collapse.

PositionPublic Finance

The head of the Electoral Commission has warned that a significant increase in the use of postal votes at the forthcoming UK general election could push the administrative system to breaking point.

The commission's chairman, Sam Younger, told Financial Management that some local authorities had not allocated enough funds or other resources to election offices. This could leave certain regions incapable of handling the likely increase in workload.

In some areas, as many as 50 per cent of voters have already registered for the postal option. Younger believes that the absence of any central control mechanisms for reviewing local authority spending on election services plus a lack of national performance standards have led to "patchiness" in core election services across the country.

Underfunded offices may well straggle to provide an efficient service, according to Younger. "The strain will certainly be felt at the next election," he said. "The administration of postal voting is enormously labour intensive and the workload will...

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