 Rhaid i chi'n gilydd arnynnu'n gweld ysgrifennu 18 o ddechrau o'r prosedurolol yn y cwestiynau cyfanyddiaeth yn 2023. We have no apologies this morning, so our first agenda item is a decision on taking items 3 and 4 in private. Item 3 will be consideration of the evidence session that we are about to have with the Electoral Commission. Item 4 is for us to consider the findings from the proxy voting evaluation. Are there committee in agreement to take I'm grateful. Our second agenda item is for us to take evidence from the Electoral Commission, and I would like to welcome Dame Susan Bruce, who is the commissioner for Scotland, Sean McNally, who is chief executive, Craig Westwood, who is the director of communications policy and research, and Andy O'Neill, who's head electoral commission at Scotland. Can I welcome you all to the meeting this morning? Can I invite you, Dame Susan, to perhaps make some opening remarks about your annual report and the position that we find ourselves in now? Thank you very much, convener. We welcome the scrutiny offered by the committee and are grateful for the opportunity to come and speak about the full span of the commission's work in Scotland in 2022-23. The commission's aim is to ensure people trust value and take part in elections. We do that by delivering our key objectives, including accessible registration and voting, transparent and compliant political campaigning and finance, resilient local electoral services, fair and effective electoral law and a modern and sustainable electoral system. We achieve those objectives in Scotland through a range of activities, and as the committee will be aware, our work in early 2022-23 focused on supporting the successful delivery of council elections across Scotland. That included providing advice, support and guidance to all those who were active in the polls, including electoral administrators, campaigners and the public. We published our statutory report on the council elections in September 2022 and we are pleased to discuss our recommendations with the committee. We have invested in our advice, support and regulatory activity in Scotland and have increased staff resource to focus on those areas. Our work has included using our performance standards framework to support and challenge returning officers at the Scottish Council elections and electoral registration officers on the year-round activities to maintain accurate and complete electoral registers. We also identified new opportunities to provide support to the regulated community to help them comply with the rules around campaign finance. Throughout 2022-23, we have continued to build on the success of our work to promote democratic education by providing learning resources for teachers and youth workers. We also piloted a youth voice programme, bringing together a group of young people from across Scotland to provide feedback on our education resources and to create new youth-friendly resources. In the next year, our core activities will continue, including our advice and guidance services to electoral administrators and campaigners, setting and monitoring performance standards for electoral administrators and publishing the details of political finance and carrying out research to better understand public attitudes to voting and democracy. In addition, we are building on our political literacy work, establishing a long-term youth voice programme. Our new partner, Children in Scotland, will be gathering insights from a diverse group of young people from across Scotland to inform our education and engagement work. Of course, we are really keen to make sure that younger people do engage in the democratic process and exercise their franchise as their time comes. We have also strengthened our provision for other under-registered groups, and next year we will make funding available for organisations supporting those who are disenfranchised. We will continue to provide expert advice and challenge to the electoral reform programme in Scotland, drawing on our policy and research expertise to ensure that any reforms are evidence-based and workable. We have already provided our own detailed response to the public consultation on reform in March this year, and we will provide advice to Parliament when the bill is introduced and developing new guidance resources for electoral administrators and campaigners to support them to comply with any new requirements arising from the legislation. Finally, we will work with the Electoral Management Board for Scotland, supporting returning officers and electoral registration officers to address the significant concerns about resilience of electoral services in Scotland and help them to meet the challenges that they face in delivering well-run services and continue to meet the voters' needs. We will be happy to answer questions. I am very grateful for that, Dame Susan, and the very timely synopsis of the report. In a year, which has been quite active from an electoral point of view with voter ID and other matters, and certainly the flurry that occurred only a few days ago on 1 November when digital imprints suddenly became the talk of corridors up and down this Parliament, was glad to see. I'm glad that you're open for questions, and if I could kick off in the first instance and really just refer back to correspondence that we had on 13 September 2023, which highlighted the lateness of the report this year, and indeed absolutely an apology for it being late and the pressure that it put on those that await these things. I'm very grateful for that. In the letter, it said, just bear with me, neither the commission nor the NAO were sufficiently well resourced to manage these processes to the timetable originally specified, and therefore the timetable was agreed. Then, as I said, the apology, which absolutely is wholly accepted. I wonder probably if I aim this at you, Sean. Could you explain what you meant about the challenge with regard to resourcing and that, and is it an on-going problem? More than happy to do so, but first of all, may I again reiterate the apology that I set out in writing because I recognise the impact it had on this session. There were a combination of factors. I think the first thing to recognise, technically in law, the report, the accounts weren't laid late, but I also accept that custom and practice in previous years and scheduling of evidence sessions are based on the annual accounts being laid at the beginning of July. The combination of factors, as all, we introduced in a new accounting system was implemented at the beginning of April 22. When we got to the air end, it became clear that there were a number of complexities and issues that needed to be worked through. In addition to that, it highlighted what has been, from my perspective, an under-investment in the financial team in recent years. We are seeking to correct that in the estimate that has gone before the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. There were other issues in relation to complexities in terms of new accounting practices and procedures that were introduced. What that meant was that we were later than we otherwise would have been in engaging the NEO on a fully balanced set of accounts so that they could complete their audit. That had knock-on consequences for the NEO who have been absolutely brilliant and I want to commend them for the work and assistance and the attention that they have given us. That then ran into issues with other audits that they were going to conduct. It meant that the people that we had had planned holidays based on the basis introduced by the end of the beginning of July. All of that meant that we needed to take the time to make sure that everything was accurate, met the accounting standards and we could, with confidence, have an unqualified set of accounts laid before Parliament. That was the reason for the delay. It was a combination of complexity with the accounting system, new accounting standards, capacity and capability within the team, knock-on consequences to national audit office. I'm grateful for that explanation. It's a set of circumstances that perhaps could not be anticipated. Do you have confidence that, I understand that you've put in the resource request, but do you have confidence that if that is met there won't be the same problem this year effectively going forward? We have to take steps and we are taking steps now in order to ensure that we don't have further delay in the laying of accounts in July 24. Excellent. Thank you very much for that. I'm now going to turn to the committee to basically lead sets of questions, but other members may have additional questions and I'll come to them when they do. Ivan, could I turn to you first, please? Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. Welcome to the committee. I want to focus a few questions about the area of supporting voters and effective electoral administration. I'll talk about our question on some of the things that have happened and then turn to look at the direction going forward and what work you might be taking forward there. A couple of specifics just to start off on. The resources to train polling staff to support disabled people so I'm interested to know how that was received and how effective that was and also the use of the online tool providing information on polling stations and candidates and how well that was received and how effective that was. I don't know who wants to pick up on those specifics. Does that offer? I certainly pick up on the second part of the question. The online tool is a postcode look-up that we have on our website which enables any voter to enter the postcode and it will give them information about what elections are happening in their area when those are coming up and then we provide all sorts of other information which is reliant upon local authorities providing us with that information at the moment but the vast majority of them do and are very supportive of the initiative. They can provide polling station data, opening times and candidate information as well. We're looking to extend that activity to make sure that we can provide more data that is helpful to voters but we find increasing year-on-year use of that facility is incredibly helpful to voters. It means that we can find them where they are and effectively they don't need to search out information in places they wouldn't expect it. They can simply look online, search for the information that they need and then have confidence in how they vote. One innovation that we've introduced in recent years is effectively the ability to place that postcode look-up on other websites. So we don't necessarily, we're not protective of people having to find the electoral commission in order to get to this information. If we can actually place that on other websites then that's fantastic. We need to find people where they are. So we're talking to all sorts of other partners including the media for example, so working with the BBC and other broadcasters, news providers, to make sure that when they're providing coverage on elections that ideally they can place this alongside us so that people have got access to that information right where they are. Is there a people who are widely used as? I don't have that information with me but I can certainly provide it afterwards but it is increasing absolutely year on year. Interesting, okay. Anyone want to pick up on the question and support from disabled voters? Obviously, Elections Act in UK Parliament has changed the legislative framework for accessibility of voting. We produced some guidance recently for returning officers following a wide consultation with various accessibility groups and such. The return officers will now move to implement the guidance at the forthcoming UK parliamentary general election whenever it takes place. It is certainly something which the Electoral Management Board for Scotland, which is a collective grouping of all 32 returning officers and 15 electoral registration officers, are very concerned about. They're obviously very keen that everyone can have a good experience from the customer's point of view in a polling station or postal voting. We held a conference in Dundee on 6 October at which 130 odd people were at and we had a workshop on this matter. We had a stall providing lots of in a sense new things which are being encouraged or the return officers being encouraged to use in elections. They are now working locally to implement the guidance, which I think they will do. Certainly Malcolm Burr, the convener of the Electoral Management Board, is very keen to ensure that this comes. In fact, the emphasis, of course, on accessibility issues, was first seen in the council elections in May in England, and there were about 30 people, deput returning officers, returning officers from Scotland, who went down to various parts of England to observe and learn, and they're taking that learning back to Scotland. The survey that I would suggest that satisfaction levels was to say that voters are broadly similar to the wider electorate, which is helpful. I was going to ask about the cyber attack, the cyber event in October 2022, if you can give me any more background on that, and then, of course, the mitigations that have been put in place to reduce the likelihood going forward. More than happy to, if I may, I'll pick that up. As a result of moving systems into the cloud and as a result of putting in additional checks, such as multi-factor authentication, we identified some unusual activity on some of our servers. Following investigation, it was clear that an external actor had had access to the system from August 21. What we immediately did was contact the National Cyber Security Centre to contact the Information Commissioner's office within the 72 hours. It was important, first of all, to take action to contain and understand which servers had been compromised, and that was done. The next stage, working with National Cyber Security Centre and the security experts, was to remove those threat actors. Then we embarked upon a period and a process of significantly strengthening, as a result of moving into the cloud, the firewalls that exist around the system, and also introduced a 24-7 monitoring system on top of the network. That was implemented with the security experts and with the oversight of the National Cyber Security Centre. I am confident that our systems are secure. There was a detailed process to go through before a public announcement, public notifications could be made. First of all, we have to be satisfied that you have closed the door because what we identified was a significant increase in the number of attempts once the public notification went out to penetrate the system. We know that, as a key part of the national infrastructure, we are always going to be the target for people who seek to undermine the democratic process. So whilst nobody can be 100 per cent certain that they have got and they can guarantee that no actor will ever be able to penetrate the system, we will constantly and continually work with National Cyber Security Centre or security experts and adapt our systems to ensure that we are taking due notice and due care of what intelligence and other attacks against other organisations are telling us. Obviously, the voter ID requirements came into place and were used in the Rulligan and Hamilton West by-election. Are you interested to get any update on how that operated? Are there any challenges associated with that? As you say, it was the first time that voter ID was put in place in Scotland, so we have been incredibly attentive to supporting the returning officer locally in making sure that the voters could be made aware of the requirement. We are still in the process of collecting the detailed data on that, so the overwhelming impression is that it has gone as well as we might have expected and particularly given confidence in line with the experiences that we had at the local elections in England just in May this year. We have led all of the public awareness work on voter ID, particularly ahead of those elections and then supporting a constituency level in Rutherglen and will continue to do so in any by-elections that occur for UK Parliament but particularly thinking about the general election next year and all of that planning is under way. I am very happy to go into any more detail of that. I don't know if there are other questions coming. What was the impact on the ground? Were there issues, if so, how many, and how were they resolved? Did it have any impact on turnout because I was hard to know that, but are there any assessments of that? Our intelligence so far is that there were not any significant issues that arose as a result of it. In terms of turnout, the main lesson that we've got is from the local elections in England where we have done a full survey of data across all local authorities that participated. The difference in turnout between that poll and the nearest comparable poll which was back in 2019 was half a percent which is obviously not within a significant statistical boundary. It's always difficult to compare turnout because there are so many different factors and it's not least the weather as well as political climate, but it gives us confidence that as voter ideas rolled out there is the ability to make it successful and make sure that everybody can participate. But our focus is specifically on demographics that are most at risk that are least likely to have ideas that don't vote at all elections and are less likely therefore to understand the policy to make sure that we reach as many of them as possible so that on polling day what to think about and have concern about is what they're going to do in terms of marking the ballot paper. Turning to the future then I'm interested in what work the commission is undertaking to ensure that voting practices keep pace with best practice and I suppose I'm also interested in how widely you're looking at best practice internationally to see how it's done elsewhere. We absolutely look at best practice internationally. Of course within the UK we're able to look at how things are delivered differently in different parts of the UK which is great at seeing examples and being able to learn from how things are going and pilots in different areas. For us the bedrock of this is what works best for the voter. So we do consistent voter surveys in terms of ongoing data each year where we ask the same questions to the electorate to understand how voting behaviour is changing how their understanding of acceptance of and confidence in the voting process is shifting but also where there are specific things that we want to look at. We do deep dive research work which may be qualitative or quantitative to really understand public appetite for change their interest in it the benefits that they would find delivered by that kind of change. So the things we're looking at around for example the voting process clearly there's the shadow of online voting about and it is absolutely something that we've got in our future plan to look at again. At the moment our public survey work is saying quite complex things back about the idea of online voting which I think shows a pretty nuanced understanding from the public of the issues both in terms of convenience but also the risks and the idea of voting into a kind of locked box where you can't see the process. There is a real sense in the electorate that people understand the tacticality and physicality of the voting process that you can see papers being counted that people can have confidence in that process. We know that that's incredibly important to candidates but it is also really important to the voter as well so we've taken a lot of confidence in that. We are exploring digital voting but I think it's at a slow pace but that of course isn't the only area where a form can happen. We're looking at all sorts of things in terms of mobile polling stations particularly for remote areas where people are a long way away from the local polling station would actually having something that was a mobile provision help us to both increase the ease for the voter because that's an important success criteria but also raise participation as well are the people that aren't participating who could be encouraged to get over that line to actually participate and vote by a change in tactic. Opening hours is a different thing of polling stations some of these are very practical and accessible examples of things but that could actually make a tangible difference and they're all areas of what they were exploring. The ability to creatively spoil ballot papers is limited with online voting of course. Stephen, do you want to come in on that point? I want to go back to the questions that Ivan had been asking about voter ID and I'm just interested just as a passing reference the voter authority certificate that's on offer to voters who don't have the photo ID as specified in law how much take-up has there been for that have you got any data on that? Yes, so particularly from the English local elections because we're still collecting data from rather Glenn the take-up was significantly lower than we expected. Of course it's not something that we set targets for because we actively didn't we don't want to drive people towards it we know that this is an additional process that places burdens on electoral administrators and we're very concerned about resilience and capacity within the electoral administrator sector so we don't want to actively drive people towards it if they don't need it and what we know is that in the overall GB population it's only around 4% of people who don't have any of the eligible forms of ID, slightly higher in Scotland so we want to make sure that we're reaching the right people with that message so our projection for the English local elections will be around 250-300,000 people that might be expected to need it the level of applications for it that actually came in was around 85,000 so significantly lower one thing that was particularly interesting then was actually the number of them that were then used to vote which was significantly lower again so people who'd applied, they'd gone through the process of applying for it but then didn't use it at the polling station that's one thing that we're still exploring of what was going on there was it that people decided that they just didn't want to vote? You've got a metric to go with that I do have a number on that, bear with me and I will find that for you but it's understanding the difference between whether it was just people who decided they didn't want to vote whether it was that they found that they had an eligible form of ID which would be great because they could then or was it something else I can't find that number They were maybe the innovative adapters maybe the adopters, maybe they wanted to see what it would look like I mean there's curiosity to all this as well Just to build on what Craig's talking about and to add a Scottish experience to it obviously there hasn't been an election in Scotland since May 2022 so the need for a voter authority certificate if you needed one isn't kind of there at the moment I observed in England but I also observed in Rutherglen, Hamilton West at both the petition and then the subsequent final action Scotland generally Scottish electoral registration officers who issue the VAC very very little take up but when you watch people coming into the Sainton station or the Pauline station they have in essence their ID with them and it's invariably in Rutherglen a driving licence or a bus pass a national entitlement card for some odd reason when in England you saw lots of passports but not in Rutherglen so anecdote anyway I mean the commission has been very public in raising concerns about the speed at which voter ID was introduced in terms of the elections that happened in May this year and we worked solidly through a four month period in raising public awareness and taking advantage of any potential channel to take up or do you want to maybe let us know I can let you know I just want to make sure I give you a specific figure it was less than half the date of the 85,000 this is just all interesting because it's a very important people who are from voting because they've got some voter ID one of the virtues that we've got thinking about the general election and particularly thinking about audiences in Scotland for that in May this year so I just want to reassure the committee that we are working now in the lead up to that general election even though we don't know when it's going to happen to make sure that we are working with electoral registration officers who we know are already communicating out to voters to raise awareness and to process voter authority certificate applications where they can be encouraged and where they're needed but also we're working particularly with civil society charities that we know have a reach into communities that are at risk and we possibly hope to have that detailed engagement we're working with them to get the messages into the hands of the right people help them to understand the requirement and to understand how to go through the application process if they need to Evelyn, can I come to you I'm okay on that Are you alright? Do you want to lead off on the next part of question 6? No I'm fine We were going to look at the support with regard to political parties because obviously as I said the kick off the 1st of November caused a marvellous rush all around here and indications and things like that so it's just really how is your interaction going with both political parties at a party level the individual candidates and indeed last time I know we were discussing the reach out that you do post events to candidates for their experience whether or not you would like to comment on that I don't know who again Craig is going to fall to you So our regulatory approach is that we want as much of that activity to fall as possible into the support category rather than the enforcement category you know if we could get to a point where we're not having to do any enforcement for infringements that would be a very happy place to be in we want to really lean in support parties candidates and of course the non-party campaigner to make sure that they can understand as clearly as possible the requirements that are placed on them to comply with those roles as the vast majority of them want to do and to make sure they can actually just get on with doing the campaigning because the most important thing for us is actually making sure that campaigning can happen and that's both in terms of on the doorstep physical events online and actually online campaigning of course where lots of people have concerns but we think online campaigning is a good thing it's a great way of reaching voters of having a two-way conversation with people which isn't just about broadcasting our political views so we want to make sure that that can happen but of course that needs to happen in a way which instills confidence in everybody we want to make sure that campaigning is done in a way which clearly communicates voters candidates' policies, parties' policies but that people can have confidence in the way that it's being done Are there any areas that you're starting to identify where you may have concerns about both the implementation and as you say absolutely leaning in to making sure there aren't any breaches but are you getting any indicative red lights on the dashboard about specific areas where there may be challenges So I think I'd highlight two examples one would be around political finance where we know that the public has significant concerns about the transparency of political finance but actually we in this country have one of the most transparent regimes in the world and can be incredibly proud of it but that doesn't necessarily communicate through to the public and indeed if you survey the public and test the level of understanding even for people who understand the transparency that does exist their confidence doesn't increase so there's something else going on there which is around the overall system and confidence in political campaigning we know that there is a question around truth in campaigning and we aren't a truth commission and we never want to be there needs to be space for free and frank political debate but there is a question there around parties and candidates and campaigners around how they conduct debate in a way to instill confidence but there are particular parts of political finance where we would like to see changes so there are concerns about foreign money into UK politics so we'd like to see some of the things around know your donor principles around money laundering which exist in other parts of finance law we'd like to see that introduced into political finance campaigning the other example I'd just like to highlight briefly if I may is artificial intelligence which of course is the topic that you use in lots of different worlds but electoral campaigning is something which is quite often brought up as one of the key examples because people can see that it's a bleeding edge of people's trust in what they can see and what they read that's something that we're looking at in significant detail it's not something that's new to us in a lot of ways because misleading and misleading information in campaigning is something that's happened for hundreds of years it's just a different mechanism of delivery and artificial intelligence can be incredibly positive in campaigning elections again as routes to understand voters to target people with specific information that's relevant to them and indeed supporting us as an organisation in doing some of our processes you have a time scale on your thinking for looking at AI we're obviously conscious that you've mentioned the potential of a general election next year clearly there won't be a finalised position on that so do you have a time scale for this just that we can take note of and come back and keep asking there's no fixed time scale on that just because I think it's a constantly evolving environment but I think what we are doing is making sure that we are prepared with the right processes to support immediate reaction if there was something that's put out that's a significant concern and I think the main thing that's a concern is a deep fake either video or audio of senior politician saying something which is controversial immediately before a poll we need to make sure that we, with other regulators and we have very strong relationships with the other regulators that have functions across elections that we can act either independently or collectively to do what we can to make sure that the public is aware of what's happening there of course any campaigning material that is a deep fake will know how to have an imprint on it so that's a really important step where actually even if somebody can't necessarily believe or understand the message that they're seeing in the campaign material at least they'll know who posted it thank you it's not necessarily the stuff that's the problem though is it I mean those deep fakes those pervers of deep fakery are not going to be in the business of putting imprints on I think that is the concern the AI can be used just as you just said but not necessarily by good actors but by very bad actors and there are quite a few of them online and they certainly are not limited to the geography of the United Kingdom yes I think that's absolutely right and we've been very cognizant from our perspective is unlikely to be registered parties and key candidates it's going to be people who are looking to disrupt it's much more likely to be people who are looking to disrupt including internationally the issue of the imprint is because it is an absolute requirement it's something that we can then talk to with social media companies for example that if something is not carrying an imprint they have something which is not a subjective judgment about whether they for example take something down it's a factual thing either it has an imprint or it doesn't so it's a really clear statement of whether something is always not falling within the legal requirements one other concerns I've got there's a disconnect perhaps in the public's mind between election material or party political material that they receive and party finance I think quite a lot of the electorate think that they are paying for some of that material is that something you've come across? it's not something I've come across actually in our survey work as a key public concern it's something we've asked specifically about because I mean I think I know a number of colleagues will deliberately put not paid by the taxpayer on their materials and I think that belies the fact that some people think that the financing of political parties is somehow part of their tax burden there's a really interesting point I've not seen it come through in our survey work it's come through in our survey work but I mean there is public money in for political party policy development I mean we administer policy development grant process which gives out money for those who have groups in the UK Parliament in addition to short money yes this is in addition to short money short money obviously should not be used for that kind of party but this is specifically about parties who are not in government and are able to develop policy so they can be a more effective part of the interactions in the democratic political discourse I mean you do get occasions where at the end of campaigns candidates ask the return officer how do I claim my expenses so I mean it's not unknown that other people who are actually standing think they're paid for when they're not indeed good luck with that understanding because I am doing that typical convener slightly conscious of time because I do want to raise both the subjective and the objective question about intimidation particularly of candidates particularly sometimes of unsuccessful candidates and I just wonder whether you could give us a little insight into the thinking and the returns that you have about the experience that people have of intimidation yes this is an issue very much front of our minds in terms of preserving that landscape of open, transparent and fair campaigning we know from our survey work at the most recent elections in Scotland that 44% of candidates in the survey work that we do reported back some kind of problem with threats of abuse or intimidation that is an alarming and really concerning figure for us it's not the highest that we see in the UK, the figures in Northern Ireland are more troubling but it is not something that we take lightly at all we obviously only have a part to play in that puzzle but we want to play that very seriously we have been convening discussions on this topic with parties with the police with all partners in elections to try and understand how we can all lean in to support a different type of campaigning more respectful getting any closer to that understanding or are we still some distance from actually really being able to define, comprehend and understand what the situation is where are we on that journey I think there are an incredible amount of moving parts on this I think there's a lot of change in society more widely people's ability to comment on and to respond to things again a lot of which is good about debate but it's ensuring that people understand the impact of their activity and I think back to the comment we were having earlier I don't think a lot of this is about party or candidate activity some of it might be at the fringes but a lot of it is about about people who are outside politics commenting in or acting into the political process so I think it is inevitably going to be a relatively long journey and a problem but I think the most confidence giving thing is actually that the conversations are happening we're convening those where we can Evelyn, I think you wanted to Thanks convener, good morning panel Yes, I'm interested in your future work that you've been talking about about intimidation how you're going to look at things but specifically about women women get more abuse we get more sexist abuse how are you going to look at gender in a very specific way and are you working with for example in gender elect her women 50-50 I don't think we're working with them as an organisation specifically I mean what we're doing is we're looking across the board intimidation whether it is a basis on gender or on ethnic background or on sexuality or any other protected characteristic where we know that people are finding that they are either not able to participate or intimidated from participating or intimidated during the process we're working across the board to try and understand what the problem is the partners that we need to work with so for example working with the Jo Cox Foundation at the moment to really make sure that we can have an impact there is a limited role that we can play but we want to make sure that we are maximising our contribution to that debate particularly in convening the debate where sometimes it's hard for others to draw that conversation out as an independent and trusted body I think we're often in a unique position to create a kind of safe space for some of those conversations and to try and take the politics out of it and see something as a collective problem which we need to work to address at election time we obviously work with Police Scotland but one thing we've managed to achieve is to ensure that Police Scotland always have briefing notes for candidates in the briefing packs which you'll get from returning officers and such like and there's a point of contact there locally for anyone who needs to contact Police Scotland but they'll also do briefings when asked as well so Police Scotland's particularly aware of the issue and is proactively trying to deal with it when it comes up Annie, can I come to you? Yes, thanks Good morning panel I would like to look at how the commission looked at raising awareness with voters in certain groups so the first question would be what work was undertaken and what is planned to help assist voters better understand the electoral system in Scotland especially the single transferable vote so I don't know if we will craig yourself again Great, so this is an area of work which we spend huge amounts of time focusing on and have teams both in Edinburgh and in London dedicated to working on the voter and raising awareness there's a lot of different parts to this so there's all of the work that we do in the lead up to an election specifically where the hot lamp turns specifically onto the topic of the election itself we do full public awareness campaigns to raise awareness of the fact that the poll is happening the various processes that people need to comply with in order to be able to participate which is obviously around deadlines for registering around the voter authority certificate and all of the other moving parts around absent votes for example but also outside of the poll we do increasing amounts of education work to make sure that we are raising awareness for young people and this is work where we actually piloted it first in Scotland because of the young franchise and then have actually been able to draw on the lessons experienced by our team here particularly in Wales and then across the rest of the country to really work with attainers and young voters to make sure that they are understanding the process which they're now able to participate in that work is able to happen in schools so we have education resources that citizenship teachers or any other interested educator can deliver in the classroom but they're also able to operate in all sorts of other educational settings including informal ones or indeed for young people just to navigate themselves all of that material includes the basic bits of the process the moving parts of who you're voting for, why it matters how and you need to get registered but also thinking about the voting process itself we're very aware that it's a process which offers the voter more choice and more options which is a great thing but it is less clear to understand so we want to make sure that we're doing as much as we can to help voters to understand that we've most recently created some new resources short videos which explain the voting process which we use on social media and in the education resources but actually our education partners can use as well so they're taking it out using it with their audiences to help them to have an easy guide through the process to understand how it works Thanks very much for that and the next one as well is it's just what support specific groups face who have got barriers to participation in electoral events and what further work is planned to help these individuals overcome such barriers So the accuracy and completeness study that we do every three or four years is a key evidence base for us understanding the electoral registers who's on it, who isn't and who we need to target so that is the first starting point of understanding where demographically people are not on the electoral registers and we know that that can tell us that if you are unemployed if you are of lower educational attainment if you're living in rented accommodation if you're in certain ethnic minority groups if you're younger there are other groups but these are all demographic groups where we need to work even harder and just thinking about that as the first step on the ladder that people have where you can't pass go if you're not registered but beyond that we do additional research to understand where there are distinct audiences that have issues with other parts of the process I think voter ID is where I can give you the best example of that as something that's coming so both we and UK Government did separate pieces of research to understand where ID ownership was of all of the different eligible forms of ID but there's that 4% of people who don't have it the difference demographically there overlaps by quite a margin with those who are unregistered so we see that there are significant differences but also there are a couple of areas where there's a distinct difference so for example if you are in an older category you are more likely to be registered than the average and more likely to vote but actually you're less likely to own ID and that's been a really interesting thing where we've ended up partnering with different organisations we've not worked with before because actually for older generations particularly over 75, over 85 there's a real strong sense of civic duty of voting but actually those audiences don't have photo ID so we've partnered with Age UK who we've been working with across the country to make sure that we can for a start co-create resources with them so that we make sure that we're giving not the information that we think is right for that audience but the audience that the experts know is going to work with that audience to really engage with them and help them understand similarly we've worked with charities for disabled people particularly learning disabilities, visual impairments to again talk in the right format whether that's easy read using Braille, using BSL all of these are formats that we use to make sure that we're talking to people in the voice that they understand and that will benefit them in the easiest way Thank you You asked a question about STV and understanding of STV originally so if I can answer that because it's a particularly Scottish thing I mean you're quite right I think the levels of understanding of single transferable vote for council elections is probably lower than the other two electoral systems we use you could probably reflect that in terms of the rejected rates rejected rate at last year was 1.85% which was slightly lower down but that's compared to C.4 for Scottish Parliament elections so we're aware of the fact that people don't quite understand that and of course Bob Dorris used to be the vice convener of this committee has been very active in this area because the canal ward in Glasgow you're talking about 5.6% rejected votes it happens in areas not just in Glasgow but other places Weston, Bonshire, North Lanarkshire places like that areas of high deprivation by unemployment it happens quite a lot it also happens in wards where parties stand more than one candidate in the same ward and that expresses itself as two Xs or three Xs or two 1s we saw back in 2022 so what we're trying to do looking forward to the 2027 election we're working with the Electoral Management Board for Scotland, the actual returning officers we're going to revise all the guidance we're going to look at all but it's not just what the return officers do it's also looking at the voter materials which Craig and his colleagues deliver to make sure that they explain there's something happens between the script which the president officer says it's SDV you vote by numbers to the booth even though there's a poster in the booth which tells you how to do it something happens which we're trying to find out but also we're looking for parties' help in all of this because of course you actually meet voters we don't so you know, scripts for your volunteers so they can get it right cos I have had to heard some anecdotal stories of absolute car crash descriptions of how you vote under SDV so that's all kind of in the works which leads to me 2027 perfect, I'm happy with that thank you very much and short, Stephen and what are you going to do about the alphabet though? I think you know what I'm talking about, right? yeah, robson's rotational or whatever I mean this is this is something which Scottish Government asked us to look at some time ago and we did some research cos one thing we would always say if you're going to play with the ballot paper check that what you're doing doesn't have any unintended consequences or even that it actually does what you're trying to do a few years ago now we actually did some work our work I think the conclusions were apologies from memory from the administrator's point of view it was doable we tested it with voters and they were they seemed content to be able to use the ballot paper there were concerns expressed by particularly the accessibility groups that it would disadvantage their communities and ultimately Scottish Government have chosen not to do anything at this time it's a question you really have to address to George Adam rather than myself and the other quick question was you said you feel that the single transferable vote system is the one system that we are the biggest challenge with I'm not entirely sure about that frankly because I think there's one thing to understand how you vote there's another thing about understanding what the calculation of the vote means and I think that the haunt is not understood even in this place frankly what more can be done to educate all of us about the mysteries of the haunt modified the haunt as it said in Scott I mean I suppose from the electoral commission's point of view we don't choose the electoral systems that's your job we merely have to try and explain them and in one there's many different levels and create me want to say something afterwards I mean there's the how to fill in the ballot paper if you want to understand how modified the haunt actually works and the relationship between the constituency and the list it's on our website and we'll direct you to it but the vast majority of people don't want that or don't need it we're more concerned about delivering the actual vote people understand how their vote will then be used to calculate how the Parliament is made up frankly and I take your point it's on your website but I wonder if we need to do a bit more to help Scottish voting public to know what it all means to be fair it's not just on our website I shouldn't underplay ourselves we have ever since we've existed produced a household leaflet which explains the electoral system for the Scottish Parliament every time it comes around we do right to fork on that there are briefings done for anyone who asks but it's people you're fundamentally blaming the politicians for choosing I mean in a sense it's our job to explain stop print element of the process was there anything else Annie just before could I just come in on the question about young people and a phrase that's used in the annual report at page 63 when we're talking specifically about Scotland there's a chance to get where we're going to and one of the things that you talk about ongoing and future work is we will work to further embed democratic education in schools and youth work settings by supporting youth workers teachers of PSE personal and social education and other subjects with resources what is your assessment of how well embedded or do you have a consideration of how well embedded democratic education is at the moment in schools so our drive is to just deliver more and more of it we're not making an assessment of the education system but it's just about driving take up and we've found that there is an incredible appetite amongst teachers for the materials and to be doing more of this work in classrooms particularly because obviously there's a sensitivity about bringing politics into the classroom teachers want to be confident that they're doing it in a way which is right which is keeping them within the bounds of what they should shouldn't shouldn't say and so actually the immense confidence that comes from having a set of resources with a stamp of approval from the Electoral Commission on an independent body it gives them that confidence that they can follow those and stay within the right rules and they're not going to get any problems with parents so for us it's just about getting more teachers to take it up and actually for us delivering more content through it so we started relatively small and we're thinking about the process but we're thinking about what more within politics can we help to provide that independent voice on to sorry I didn't mean to cut you off like that but where do you see your position or do you see any of your position in leading that discussion about how you increase how you increase the embedding of democratic process within education or do you see it I mean you spoke before about bringing groups together who in safe spaces not with the same language with regard to schools do you see yourselves as having a role in that I think what we can do is advocate for being part of the curriculum what we have no expertise on is balancing all of the different parts that have to play in the curriculum there's an incredible amount of things that can be delivered through the education system and we can't provide the assessment of the balance of that but what we can do is advocate so we advocate really strongly for democratic education being a part of that and of the value that that will add to young people as citizens for the rest of their life I think that's very helpful, thank you There was a really good take up during welcome to your vote week and we've been working with schools, with other organisations, youth groups, guide scouts, things like that to ensure that as many avenues as possible are open to young people get information on how to vote how to exercise their franchise without obviously influencing them on their choices I can say that I've had young people particularly through girl guides and the deep cadets come back and want to talk about democracy in the wider sense so it is not just schools and I think that's important as well The fact that the products we produce which others can use because they've got the badge of us people feel confident around that and that's why Catherine Heggy who's sitting behind me was at the Modern Studies Association's conference at the weekend so we get out there and talk to people and then give them the tools to do the job I appreciate that and I think it's very powerful the phrase that you are advocates for democracy being taught and educated and that is the role which is helpful Stephen, can I come to you? My personaly is the completeness and accuracy of the registers and there are lots of really like stand out questions particularly about Scotland of course in relation to this let me share for context for those who are watching on completeness the report that you've produced shows that major errors total in Scotland was 18.5% that is up from 2018 and it was 16.5% but I think what the watching public might be interested in is the fact that compared with the rest of Great Britain where the number is 13.4% for major errors we are at 18.5% I think that obviously requires explanation on minor errors again for context the number in Scotland is 13.4% across Great Britain 8.6% so there's something different happening in Scotland and it seems to be getting worse over time why? This is a study which highlights that up to a million people who could be registered are not registered in Scotland and that's as context of an overall figure of around 8 million in the whole of the UK which is another thing that we're very concerned about this is a figure which is relatively static obviously growing as the population grows but registration of voters is effectively an on-going challenge for us and for electoral registration officers across local authorities which is fundamentally not going to improve in a significant way without reform so I think in terms of the detail there are differences between different parts of the UK they fluctuate there are always lessons to be learned with all returning officers and electoral registration officers to really understand particularly where best practice is delivering really strong registration so that others can learn from that but our main focus is on raising the case for reform of registration because that's the only thing that is really going to deliver a systematic change and make sure that these people who could have a vote can get on the electoral register so that if they decide the day before polling day actually there's an issue I feel really really strongly about and I want to cast my vote that they can then do so so we've done work to recommend the changes that need to be made they can be made at a devolved level or reserve level around the use of public data existing data sets that the public sector already holds to use those with electoral registration in ways which are fully secure and people can have confidence in but to get people on the electoral registers either in a way which is automated so it would effectively offer to the citizens say it looks like you're not on the electoral register would you like to be on it or in an automatic way just putting them on on the electoral register we think there's fundamental change that can happen there but it is absolutely deliverable I'm hearing all that very loudly and clearly from you and I appreciate that but that doesn't answer my question why are we in Scotland why is there a lag between what's happening the rest of Great Britain because it's a Great Britain number we're quoting and happening in Scotland because that deeply concerns me I mean and the fact that there might be up to a million people in Scotland I mean we are I don't know what the total estimated voting public is in Scotland but it must be about three and a half million so we're saying a million of three and a half aren't registered this is extraordinary so some of the fall is within the margin of area of the survey so I think we just need to approach looking at it too analytically with caution but we are taking it really seriously we're talking to electoral registration officers we know that there is an issue in Scotland with actually just getting returns to correspondence from households and from voters so there is an issue there about actually getting people to just respond to the electoral communications I mean why do you think that is what's your analysis because I suppose we could draw parallel with the census return the census return in Scotland was virtually catastrophic compared with the rest of the... You make an interesting point because there has been some difficulties in getting returns back in the canvass we're not really sure why that is we're trying to work the problem and discover it I mean if you look at, to use a technical the Trunche 2 returns for the canvass in England in Wales they're getting 10% more returns than we are in Scotland we're not sure why but we're working with colleagues in England to try and understand the processes they're doing to see if our colleagues in electoral registration in Scotland are doing something different but I think the key, I mean all the things Krig has said is very very valid, I think it's really important to know that the Scottish Government are very very supportive of the report we've produced we're already talking to them the minister next week the electoral registration officers and the electoral management board for Scotland are very concerned about this it's something which is on the agenda and isn't going to go away Are there specific groups that we have a particular challenge with in terms of getting them to come on to the register we haven't even begun to talk about accuracy yet because we've got a... a challenge with accuracy as well and I take your point about not reading too much into one set but it's the data we've got so what are the groups that you feel we have to work particularly hard at getting to register? So in terms of registration the main challenges in terms of scale of problem is around people who are unemployed people of lower education attainment people who are younger and people who are in rented accommodation frequently and therefore you're constantly chasing them and trying to get them to register the other challenge in this that we find from a different piece of research which I might just introduce is around the reasons why people aren't registered so we do research occasionally to support our public awareness campaigns and making sure we're targeting those effectively to really understand the barriers to registration what we've seen over the last six or seven years since we last did our study was that the reasons have moved from being more kind of incidental operational so people saying oh I've just moved house oh I didn't realise I was now eligible it's kind of practical reasons to much more attitudinal reasons so people saying I don't feel my vote has an impact I don't trust politicians nothing is ever going to change those kind of more emotive responses that are much harder to tackle which really speaks to the value and importance of the education work that we do but also thinking about when we're doing that campaign work ahead of an election to help people understand that they need to register to vote we're really thinking how do we message that and so the registration campaign that we've had for the last four or five years has focused on the ease of the process so it's saying to people it only takes five minutes because we knew one of the drivers was people saying oh it's a bureaucratic process it's going to take ages I can't be bothered actually it does only take five minutes genuinely why don't you find time to do it while your the washing machine's on whereas now we're developing a new campaign which will first be rolled out at the scheduled May elections next year which is focused much more on the emotive message around voting and why you should vote and the importance of it and the civic pride aspect of being registered and voting because we feel that that's going to be the thing that is more likely to break down the barrier that people have got to register Scottish Fair mentioned all of that the attitudinal stuff in particular it's a UK wide there are small variations but we do all of that testing happens fully across the UK so that we can be confident that we're testing in each market where we will do a campaign Do you have any specific geographic insight for the Scottish national position though I could provide those I don't have it here but I could provide those afterwards In the area of an electoral event where our campaigning if you like in this respect raises along with EROs and ROs so ahead of the council elections in Scotland in 2022 there were something in the regions of 70,000 additional people came on to the register and it's the relevance of the campaign ahead of an electoral event so if we need to time our work to get people's peak interest as it were but then they need to keep remembering as Craig said if they move or something happens they need to remember to come back on so it's a constant piece of work that needs to be attended to The accuracy issue can you comment on that because again in Scotland just for information purposes in context the issue of accuracy where an individual on the register no longer lives at the address 9.7% in Scotland compared with it's pretty much the same across the United Kingdom so the accuracy figure contains all sorts of different details where there could be a major error such as a name being wrong which might be around somebody having married and changed their name and not having updated it to smaller differences around say a middle name being wrong or there being a misspelling of a surname so there's quite a bit of detail within the accuracy figure which it's not that it doesn't matter but it's not necessarily going to stop somebody being able to cast their vote so it's much more complex than the black or white aspect of somebody is or isn't on the register which is what's represented in the complete measure I mean all of this is about understanding within the electoral community what's working best in terms of process and best practice and making sure that we play a role in sharing that as well as all of the other mechanisms that exist within the administrator community what's working best practice I know Ivan would like to come in but so can I just clarify that the inaccurate register entries is a subset of not correctly registered rather than in addition to that yes Ivan I'll come back to you I'm just trying to get my head round these numbers so excuse me if we do a wee bit of a dive into it I'd first like to understand how do you arrive at those percentage numbers is that a survey a sample survey you do and then you project from that and how is that survey conducted yes it's the biggest piece of research that we do which is why we only do it every few years so the most recent one cost three quarters of a million pounds to do because we take it incredibly seriously and we've got to get the detailed coverage across the whole of the UK to make sure that we're understanding things properly what it does is it takes the December registers in the particular year that we're looking at so there's a point where we press pause on the registers all of the authorities submit them to us and that is then compared against census information and then effectively the company that we employ to do the work then goes out and does telephone and house to house contact where appropriate in different areas to test that information to actually find within that address who is actually living there who is eligible relative to the data that's on the system within that we make sure that we're getting full coverage geographically but also across different demographics as well to get as an accurate as a picture as we possibly can to compare that to the census data to understand what that gap is and then drill and then verify that and I suppose at a macro level we kind of know what both those numbers are because you know the total ready servers and you know the census number so you know what the gap is at a macro level yes, the onlinn is of course is the electorate figure so really understanding all of the people out there who might to be registered and that's why you get with some of the figures that we report in the survey you will get a boundary because we're working with statistician of experts we need to take a best guess around the changes in electorate so just to be clear but you know where the electoral role is yes, we know who's who's on it and who's registered but in terms of the eligibility figure we don't, certainly we don't hold that data it's about understanding the data that's coming from other sources for example attainers or the number of people who have become eligible right, okay so you used to say that back at a macro level I'm sorry to Jill Antons because it's quite important because that big one million number is really scary Scotland's population is about 5.5 million give or take if you look back to the Scottish Parliament election 2021 the electorate that election was just shy of 4.3 million if you exclude under 16s I think that number is about 900,000 so you're then talking about a gap that's worth 2 to 300,000 and there'll be other groups in the other evening a Scottish Parliament election I would imagine wouldn't necessarily be eligible to vote there'll probably not a significant number on that but that while it's a number it's clearly a long way from 650 to a million plus number you're talking about here so I'm just going to struggle to reconcile that because if you add up what was on the electoral register in 2021 plus this up to a million number you've got here and take account under 16s you've got a Scottish population it's pushing 6.5 million so I'm kind of struggling to reconcile this your estimate is that it's 19% of the eligible population who are missing from the electoral register but you see what I'm saying in terms of those big picture numbers yes are you able to cast any light on that not here today but we can certainly go away and discuss with colleagues and come back to you I see my kind of obvious thing to check do you want me to say so he's satisfied now I know but I think that the offer is there to come back to the better explanation which I think we will need Ivan's just prompted a question I think what we're posing is the statistical background to these figures when you compare that to the more obviously available figures that we have in essence we know who's registered we know what they are because it is quite a broad 650,000 to a million here today but that is a big space in between there if we could get some explanation as to why that is the category that's used or indeed if there are steps that could make it more accurate that would be helpful sorry Stephen it's just that if 20% of the potential electorate are missing off the register what does that mean in terms of the work that the boundary commission have done about equalising constituencies because that's going to be using the same data set so straight away the same bill and presumably that particularly impacts urban areas and rural areas I was like wildly differential because the groups that will be the most impact will be concentrated in certain areas that's right we certainly consider that in our next discussion that is a real concern in terms of our yes it is the same data that is essence taken when the register shuts at specific dates for that the fact must be that those who aren't on the register at that date and if they're eligible to be on a not part of the calculation that's made for other purposes as well that you raise I mean is this because it would be to my mind the significant challenge that Dame Susan you refer to when you're opening the remarks to the resilience of our electoral system we've got an electoral system in a democracy where one in five of the potential voters are not even on the register let alone not voting it's very very alarming for Scotland's democracy if those numbers are correct subject to that I'm going to turn committee I'm going to turn back to the panel as this is the evidence I don't know whether Dame Susan you'd like to comment on that or are satisfied that you can respond to us which may assist you can see where our challenge is on the statistics what we'll do is we'll go back written information to you on how the figures have come about and certainly if it points to more questions we need to ask them we will go when do that but we can certainly submit something in writing thank you so moving on from that and I hear what you're saying about your desire to have a process that joins up different datasets and enables people to register every opportunity and you talked think about UK legislation in that regard is there any of that that is devolved is there anything that the Scottish Government can do to assist in that process or indeed local authorities the kind of changes that we're talking about could be taken forward at a devolved level and indeed we're in more advanced discussions in Wales about the desire to reform registration but conversations are happening here as well what has the Scottish Government's attitude to that been to encourage progress obviously we sent the report to the convener we sent it to the minister at the same time before it came out we had a very positive response from George Adam we're seeing George Ann next week about it and I know civil servants are talking to us they're talking to the AROs and they're talking to the AMB and their open government people they're particularly keen on trying to use datasets that the Government have control over for one of a better phrase to use for instance things like opportunities to register when you apply for a driving licence or a passport they're reserved but if you're applying for a national entitlement called a bus pass that is Scottish Government alright I've got a national entitlement called but I'm registered I'm at the other end of the age spectrum but you're now giving free bus passes to younger people they're a cohort which are generally a lot less registered that's an opportunity which we hope can be brought on stream with the potential vehicle for the change coming along in the near future good do members have any other questions ah there we go Dame Susan and to the other guests on this panel can I thank you very much for your contribution today it's been incredibly helpful and I think the cross-committee discussions that have gone on we know where you are and we may well correspond seeking further information and if there is anything I know that we've requested certain very specific items but if there is anything else that you'd like us to be aware of that we haven't managed to cover in the report please feel free to contact us and can I thank you for your attendance today thank you opportunity thank you I'll now move the committee into private