The Cabinet Office should take over the performance management of local authorities’ electoral services departments in a bid to better clamp down on voter fraud, the government's anti-corruption champion has said.
Former communities secretary Sir Eric Pickles said the move would allow the Electoral Commission – which currently has statutory responsibility for overseeing councils’ implementation of election rules – to concentrate on monitoring party finance and overseeing national campaign expenditure.
The recommendation is one of 50 proposals for decreasing the prevalence of electoral fraud, prompted by scandals at the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, Birmingham City Council, Slough Borough Council and other authorities.
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Pickles said that in Tower Hamlets, where voter intimidation and the misuse of postal votes had been rife, the Electoral Commission had given the authority a gold-star rating for electoral integrity “despite years of warnings on misconduct”.
The borough’s elected mayor Lutfur Rahman was removed from post in 2014 after being found guilty of illegal and corrupt practices under the provisions of the Representation of the People Act.
In his report, Pickles called on ministers to revisit the role of the Electoral Commission to identify how it could “best operate in providing guidance, training and support with relation to the administration of electoral events”.
He said the government should consider how the performance management regime should be reformed and focus more clearly on key outcomes.
“Such a system of benchmarks would be better undertaken by the Cabinet Office, subject to the statutory framework being approved by parliament,” he said.
“The Electoral Commission continues act to as a commentator and lobbyist on both policy and law. Yet government should not be lobbying government.
“It would be clearer for electoral law and electoral policy to be determined by the Cabinet Office, subject to parliamentary scrutiny and approval.
“The structuring of the performance management regime of local government should be determined by government, again subject to parliamentary approval, with appropriate arrangements to reflect devolution.”
The Electoral Commission did not respond directly to Sir Eric’s suggestion that the Cabinet Office take over some of its remit, but it insisted that it took electoral fraud “extremely seriously”.
Pickles’ other recommendations included a move to restrict postal-vote “harvesting” by political activists, piloting some form of voter-identification requirement at polling stations, stronger checks on municipal corruption, and a ban on photography at polling stations to prevent voters being intimidated into providing photographic evidence of how they completed their ballot papers.