Postal vote trial shows rise

Some say traditional voting could become a thing of the past

The first all-postal ballot in a Welsh election has shown a slight rise in turn-out.

Voters in Monmouthshire trialled the ballot system with a difference to elect a new councillor in Caldicot.

On Friday, organisers of the election hailed it as an experiment that worked. The turn-out was almost 32%, slightly up on the last election figure of 27%, but not as good as had been hoped.

The Teith result was announced on Thursday

Previous all-postal voting trials had shown encouraging results. One in Stirling, Scotland, saw a turn-out of 63.2% - compared to a figure of 43% when the area's last by-election was held in 2000.

A month later in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, the turnout rose from 29% to 52%.

The Monmouthshire poll was held on the same day that a report by Electoral Commission called for more such pilots.

It said there needed to be a more detailed look at such methods before they were adopted right across the UK.

Text messages

Published on Thursday, the report said trials of new voting methods have paved the way for internet and telephone voting at a future general election.

The commission has delivered its verdict on the pilot voting schemes, which also included text message votes, used in the May local elections.

There were few technical glitches with the new methods but more pilots were needed before such schemes are used nationwide, it warned.

The government has allocated £30m for more pilot schemes. A total of 30 different council areas have so far experimented with schemes such as postal voting, internet voting, text messaging and weekend voting.

First steps

Sam Younger, chairman of the Electoral Commission, said: "The pilots provide a clear indication of how successful postal voting can be in boosting turnout.

"It also shows us that although there is still a great deal of work needed before we can have a fully e-enabled election, the first steps have been successfully taken."

Mr Younger described government talk of an "e-enabled" general election by 2006 as "over-optimistic".

But he said he thought it was realistic that an element of electronic voting could be used for the general election after next.

There is optimism in some quarters that all-postal votes could be rolled out for next year's elections in the devolved assemblies but the commission are unwilling put an actual timescale on such a move.