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If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, it may also be littered with postal votes. Conceived to encourage voters to have their say and initially hailed as a success for democracy, postal votes have so far proved anything but.

In 2004, postal voting fraud brought disgrace to the UK’s electoral system, with ‘ghost voting’ and other fraudulent practices being widespread. The judge hearing the trial of the electoral fraud in the 2004 Birming­ham by-elections termed the UK a “banana republic” in respect of its postal voting system. The election result was duly voided.

Adare, which has produced around 3m ballot packs for today’s local elections, believes the UK is still wide open to a repeat of 2004 and is leading the call for change after decrying the lack of regulatory print accreditations required by councils in their print tenders.

Angus Walker, business development director at Adare, said: “I believe there should be more emphasis placed on the printer’s quality systems and data handling capability and less emphasis placed on the commodity price.

Time pressures
“I do not think that central government understands the pressures that a 25-day – or 17-day for a parliamentary General Election – timetable causes printers and local councils, especially as the production is in April, which is a traditionally busy month in this industry.”

Kevin Illingworth co-founder of K2, which is owned by Dsicmm and printed 2.5m ballot packs in 2007, goes one step further, saying some of the printers that print the ballots are “not fit for purpose”.

“A lot has been done since the Birmingham by-elections, but there are still too many organisations printing the ballots without proper accreditation,” he says.

Walker adds: “I believe there needs to be some basic fundamental standards or quality systems in place before a printer should be able to tender for this type of critical communication.

“ISO 9001 and 27001 should be benchmarks. However, a similar benchmark to the APACS 55 required by the financial services sector needs to be considered.”

ISO 27001 was created to help organisations ensure the security of information. It is applicable to all sectors of industry and commerce and relates to information printed or written on paper, stored electronically, transmitted by post or email, shown on films, or spoken in conversation.

APACS Standard 55 was introduced in 2005 as an additional requirement to complement ISO 27001. Together, the two standards, which are based on good industry practice for information security management, set the benchmark for security printing.

Meanwhile, the ISO 9001 ac­­creditation for quality ma­­nage­­ment is internationally recognised and applies to the processes by which an organisation creates and controls its products and services. It prescribes systematic control of activities to ensure customer expectations are met.

Bare minimum
Illingworth says these accreditations should be a bare minimum. “We have invested in a security system called Elector­Scan, our postal vote veri­­­fi­­cation solution, which enables councils to scan signatures on a one-by-one basis,” he says.

“In addition, we can print a digital watermark into the ballot paper to confirm whether or not it is an original. There are a whole host of measures that can be taken to protect against postal vote fraud, but these are not being implemented across the board.”

Walker adds that the most secure printers are those that offer a “data-to-post” service, whereby all products are manufactured in-house, so no part of the supply chain is outsourced.

The government and the Ministry of Justice have done much to safeguard against postal vote fraud since the 2004 Birmingham debacle. A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice told PrintWeek that a system of personal identifiers has been introduced, including signatures and date of birth.

However, the Electoral Commission agrees that more action needs to be taken. It has called for a system of individual registration that would require every individual elector to complete and sign their electoral registration form, improving the integrity of the system and allowing people to participate with confidence.

Not far enough
Walker says that, even with the date of birth and signature checks, there is still potential for fraud. “The most critical change would be to employ Individual Voter Registration, which would give councils a base signature to match when subsequent applications are made. Cur­rently, only one signature is required per dwelling.”

The postal voting system in the UK needs a comprehensive, all-encompassing overhaul leading to the establishment of detailed security measures throughout all stages of the process, from printing to polling day. The print tender process should form a key part of any such review and the correct checks must be put in place within any tender. Without this, there can be no guarantee that further fraud will not be committed and further embarrassment poured on our electoral system.