§ 7. Mr. Dribergasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will now make a comprehensive statement on the widespread disfranchisement of Servicemen at the General Election.
§ Mr. EdeAs the answer is necessarily rather long, I will, with permission, circulate it in the Official Report.
§ Following is the statement:
§ The arrangements made to enable persons in the Services to vote at the General Election -were in three stages. First, the Service register was compiled on the basis of Service declarations received by registration officers on or before 15th March. Not all Service declarations received by that date were, however, effective for the purpose of inclusion in the May register, because some were incorrectly made out. Others were not received at all owing to loss by enemy action or other causes. The arrangements made in this respect—based on the recommendations of the Vivian Committee, on which the main political parties were represented—were carried out but the number of ineffective declarations is not ascertainable. The number of electors on the May Service register was aoproximately 2,900,000. It must be borne in mind that many members of the Forces were under 21 years of age and were consequently ineligible for registration. Any person registered could appoint a proxy, and about 67 per cent, did so
§ Secondly, provision was made to enable persons in the Services to apply for postal 571 voting facilities. The arrangements followed the recommendations of a conference presided over by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, on which again the main political parties were represented. About 1,700,000 applications were received by registration officers throughout the United Kingdom. Some 25 per cent, of these applications were- ineffective because the applicant's name could not be traced in the May Service register. The reason for this was that the applicant had not made a Service declaration, or that his declaration was ineffective for one of the reasons I have mentioned, or that his postal voting application failed to state the address to which he had declared, or stated it incorrectly. A further 3 to 4 per cent, of these applications were ineffective because they were received after the closing date. The remaining 71 per cent, were effective.
§ Thirdly, ballot papers were sent by post to those persons who had made effective postal voting applications, unless they were outside the postal voting areas. The number of ballot papers sent was about 1,280,000, representing 42 percent, of the total Service electorate. Eighty-five per cent, of these ballot papers were received back by Returning Officers before the count. About 14,000 had to be rejected because they were not accompanied by declarations of identity, or were otherwise defective, but over 1,000,000 were included in the count, representing 35 per cent. of the Services electorate.
§ I have said that about 67 per cent. of the persons on the Service register appointed proxies. Nearly 985,000 or about 50 per cent, of these proxies voted as such. No doubt many refrained from doing so because they knew that the persons by whom they had been appointed had subsequently applied to vote by post. Thirty-one per cent. of these proxy votes were eliminated because the persons on whose behalf they were cast had voted by post, but some 682,000 were included in the count, representing 24 per cent, of the Service electorate. Thus about 1,700,000 or 59 per cent. of Service voters voted by post or by proxy. The number who voted in person at a polling station is not ascertainable.
§ The arrangements which produced this result were made, with little guidance from 572 previous experience, and were executed, in conditions of total war or its immediate aftermath; they involved operations on a very great scale, and they required contact between over 600 separate constituencies at home, and some 3,000,000 men and women scattered over a large part of the earth's surface.
§ A detailed summary of the figures from which the information I have given is derived is being published this afternoon as a Return to an Address.