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Comment: voter confusion over polling
Evening Standard29.04.08
With less than 48 hours to go until the day of the Mayoral elections, Londoners should be preparing to cast their votes confident that all is well with the electoral process. Unfortunately, though it is far too late for any changes this time, that is not the case. The electoral system for the London Mayor and Assembly employs full-scale proportional representation, used for the first time in England in 2000. Our survey today suggests many of those entitled to vote do not grasp the impact of the second preference vote. As for the additional member system for selecting the London Assembly, this baffles many.
Worse still, many who are eligible to vote are not even on the electoral roll, according to a survey for the Electoral Commission. It is perhaps little surprise that much of London's highly mobile population, particularly among the young and ethnic minorities, has not got around to registering. However, the scale of the problem - more than a quarter of 25-34 year-olds appear to be missing from the roll - is worrying.
Amid concern over these difficulties, and disruption to practical arrangements for the declaration of the result, the offer by Vauxhall's Labour MP Kate Hoey to act as an adviser on sport to Boris Johnson, if he wins, stands out as a genuine expression of conviction. She has stopped short of endorsing the Conservative candidate. However, after her role in successfully demanding a police investigation of the Green Badge Taxi School, run by associates of former Mayoral aide Lee Jasper, her decision is a reminder of the problems of cronyism that have beset Mr Livingstone's City Hall.
As for more mundane matters of electoral administration, more must be done in future to tackle failure to register and to understand the voting process. One of the tasks for the new Mayor, whoever he is, is to communicate understanding of how the procedure works and to get more of those entitled to vote onto the electoral roll.
