REF/S4/13/3/A
REFERENDUM (SCOTLAND) BILL COMMITTEE
AGENDA
3rd Meeting, 2013 (Session 4)
Thursday 7 February 2013
The Committee will meet at 10.00 am in Committee Room 1.
1. Proposed referendum franchise bill: The Committee will take oral evidence, by video conference, from—
Michael de la Haye, Greffier of the States (Clerk of the States Assembly - Jersey), States of Jersey;
and then from—
Paul Whitfield, Deputy Registrar General of Electors (Electoral Roll), States of Guernsey.
Andrew Mylne Clerk to the Referendum (Scotland) Bill Committee Room T2.60 The Scottish Parliament Edinburgh Tel: 0131 348 5951 Email: [email protected] REF/S4/13/3/A
The papers for this meeting are as follows—
Agenda item 1
SPICe briefing REF/S4/13/3/1
PRIVATE PAPER REF/S4/13/3/2 (P)
REF/S4/13/3/1
Scottish Parliament Information Centre logo
CROWN DEPENDENCIES
This paper was written for the Referendum (Scotland) Bill Committee ahead of its video conference sessions with electoral officers from Guernsey and Jersey (7 February) and the Isle of Man (21 February). It provides background on the franchises, voter registration eligibility, population, voter turnout and data protection legislation for the three Crown Dependencies.
CROWN DEPENDENCIES
The Bailiwick of Guernsey, the Bailiwick of Jersey and the Isle of Man are not part of the UK but are self-governing dependencies of the Crown. They have their own directly elected legislative assemblies, administrative, fiscal and legal systems and their own courts of law. The Crown Dependencies are not represented in the UK Parliament.
In February 2006, the Isle of Man became the first part of the British Isles to lower its voting age from 18 to 16, the first election under the increased franchise was held in November 2006. Jersey and Guernsey both made legislative changes to reduce their voting ages to 16 in 2007, the first elections affected were in 2008.
GUERNSEY
Eligibility
A potential voter can register to vote if they:
are 15 or over (although they will not be able to vote until they are 16)
have been resident in Guernsey for 5 years (with or without breaks) or 2 years continuously
are ordinarily resident in Guernsey
are not currently subject to a legal disability1.
It should be noted that it is the right of residency and not nationality which makes a person eligible to vote.
1 Legal disability applies to a person who has been certified as being of unsound mind; is under legal guardianship or is detained in a hospital or institution on the orders of a Law Officer as being in need of treatment for a mental condition. It is not a legal requirement to submit a date of birth when registering on the Roll in Guernsey (although some individuals choose to provide this information). This makes it difficult to obtain accurate figures of the number of young people registering. Ahead of the 2012 General Election, 682 16-18 year olds registered (and included their date of birth) and a further 196 15 year olds preregistered to vote in future elections. This is out of a total figure of 29,500 individuals on the Roll.
Population
JERSEY
The Channel Island of Jersey lowered its voting age from 18 to 16 in July 2007. Although Jersey is not officially part of the United Kingdom its citizens are British. The change added around 2,000 names to the electoral roll and meant that those aged 16 or over were able to vote in the 2008 elections of senators and deputies in October and November 2008 respectively.
Eligibility
If a potential voter is 16 or over and has lived in Jersey for either:
the last 2 years, or
the last 6 months plus a period totalling 5 years
2 then, regardless of their nationality, they can vote in Jersey elections.
Review of electoral legislation
In 2012, a Privileges and Procedures sub-committee of the States of Jersey was appointed to review the Public Elections Law.
Among other topics, the sub-committee is looking at: improvements to the registration of electors, ease of voting, access for disabled voters, prisoner voting rights and pre poll and postal voting.
The committee intends to bring forward amendments to the law in time for the 2014 elections.
Population
Table 2.1, reproduced from the Report on the 2011 Jersey Census, shows 81,644 people were of voting age:
THE ISLE OF MAN
In February 2006 the Isle of Man was the first part of the British Isles to lower the voting age from 18 to 16. Although it is not officially part of the United Kingdom, it recognises the Queen as Head of State and its citizens are British.
Eligibility
In order to be included in the register of a Polling District on the Isle of Man a potential voter must:
on the relevant registration date have had their usual place of abode in the electoral area, and have, during the whole of the preceding 12 months, had their usual place of abode in the Island.
reach the age of 16 before the next relevant registration date. This means that if they are 15 years old but will become 16 years old before the date of the next quarterly revision of the register then their name can appear on the register and they will be eligible to vote from the date of their 16th birthday.
not register in more than one Polling District within the Island.
3 Regardless of nationality, residents of the Isle of Man are entitled to register and vote in all elections.
Electoral registration
Two registers of electors are prepared by the Isle of Man Electoral Registration Unit: the full register and the edited register.
The full register contains details of residents eligible to participate in elections in the Island, including names, addresses and, in certain circumstances, date of birth. The law makes it compulsory to provide these details for inclusion in the full register.
The edited register leaves out the names and addresses of people who have asked for them to be excluded from that version of the register. Copies of the edited register can be bought by anyone who asks for a copy at the General Registry and they may use it for any purpose.
Review of registration
The following information on the 2006 registration process was taken from the report of an inquiry (Wright 2007) instigated by the Isle of Man Government and laid before the Tynwald in 2007.
The Tynwald had called for the inquiry as it had concerns about the number of people disenfranchised in the 2006 General Election to the House of Keys due to the state of the electoral register. The 2006 rolling register had been compiled from scratch, with no carry forward from the previous register.
Forms were sent out in January, February and March 2006, and notices were placed in the press to encourage return. A provisional register was prepared with about 47,000 names. The 2005 voters list had shown more than 57,000 registered electors. The 2006 mini census showed a population of more than 80,000.
Three months before the general election a big effort was made to encourage more people to register, including a second canvass to all non-responding addresses and radio and press advertising. Schools were also targeted to get more sixth formers, and the 16 & 17 year olds now entitled, on the register. The register increased to 52,000, but it was believed that it should have contained somewhere close to 64,000 names.
The report stated that there were approximately 2,000 16 and 17 year old residents on the Island at the time of the election (but it was not clear how many of these were eligible to register, i.e. had been on the Island for 12 months or more). Of those 2,000 only 718 (35.2%) registered, 689 in constituencies in which an election was held. Of those registered 397 (57.6%) turned out to vote, compared to the overall turnout rate of 61.2%.
Electoral education
Prior to the 2011 election, two informal information sessions called "Vote Right" were held at the island's youth cafe in Douglas, the Island’s capital.
4 Population
The population table below was reproduced from the Isle of Man Treasury’s 2012 Digest of Economic & Social Statistics:
VOTER TURNOUT
In October 2011, Jersey held elections for Senators, Deputies and Connétables of the States of Jersey. It was estimated that approximately 77,560 persons were eligible to vote. By the time of the elections, 61,987 people were registered to vote and 28,212 people (36% of those eligible) voted.
A question in the Jersey Annual Social Survey 2012 (Statistics Unit 2012) asked whether the respondent voted in the October 2011 elections. A clear age trend was identified for voting patterns. As shown in Figure 2.11 from the Survey report below, younger age groups were less likely to report having voted; just a third (33%) of 16-34 year olds reported having voted compared to four-fifths (79%) of those aged 65 years or over.
In the 2012 Guernsey election 20,459 people cast their vote, a turnout of 71.4%.
5 There are no official statistics which compare the voter turnover in the Crown Dependencies. The following table, which includes information on various elections in the Crown Dependencies, was compiled for an undergraduate dissertation, Electoral registration and turnout in Jersey: voter participation in a small jurisdiction (Schenk 2011):
CROWN DEPENDENCIES AND DATA PROTECTION
In 1980, the United Kingdom signed and ratified European Union Convention 108, entitled ‘Convention for the Protection of Individuals with Regard to the Automatic Processing of their Personal Data’. This ratification by the United Kingdom required that the United Kingdom bring into force Data Protection Legislation to protect individuals from misuse of their personal information that has been processed by some form of automatic means. Consequently, the UK’s Data Protection Act 1984 was brought into force in the UK in 1985.
6 Between 1980 and 1984 the Crown Dependencies of Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man were asked by the UK to agree to have Convention 108 extended to them which they did.
Isle of Man
The Isle of Man has had data protection legislation since 1986. The current legislation, the Isle of Man Data Protection Act 2002, came into operation on the 1 April 2003. The Act is based upon the UK’s Data Protection Act 1998 and gives effect in the Island to Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data.
Consent is not defined in the Act; however, Article 2 of the European Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC, upon which the Act is based, defines “the data subject’s consent” as:
“…any freely given, specific and informed indication of his wishes by which the data subject signifies his agreement to personal data relating to him being processed”.
It is generally accepted that a person who has attained the age of 16 can give consent, provided he or she is capable of understanding the action to which he or she is consenting. However, a person cannot consent to a contract if he or she is incapable of understanding the nature of the contract.
Therefore, although the data subject has attained the age of 16 years, if the nature of the processing could adversely affect the data subject and the data controller is not certain that the data subject does not fully understand the implications, then the consent of a parent or guardian should be sought.
Jersey
Jersey’s data protection legislation, equivalent to the UK’s 1984 Act ,was drafted, debated and passed by the States of Jersey as the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 1987 came into force on 11 November 1987.
The current data protection legislation is the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005.
Guernsey
The current data protection legislation for Guernsey is the Data Protection (Bailiwick of Guernsey) Law, 2001.
PRISONER VOTING RIGHTS
Both Guernsey and the Isle of Man already allow prisoners to vote in elections.
As previously stated, Jersey's Public Elections Law is currently being reviewed and voting rights for prisoners is one area being considered.
7 SOURCES
BBC: News: Manx teenagers shun voting rights http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/isle_of_man/6041074.stm
BBC: News: Guernsey: Guernsey Election 2012: As it happened http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-guernsey-17763881
BBC: Jersey: My Island: Talking Jersey: Voting at 16 http://www.bbc.co.uk/jersey/content/articles/2006/02/17/old_enough_to_vote_feature.shtml
Economic Affairs Division Electoral Registration Unit (2011) How to register to vote: Guidance for Voters http://www.gov.im/lib/docs/cso/election/howtoregistertovote.pdf
Isle of Man Treasury (2012) 2012 Digest of Economic & Social Statistics http://www.gov.im/lib/docs/treasury/economic/digest2012final.pdf
Isle of Man: CSO - Election - Election Home Page http://www.gov.im/cso/election/
Ministry of Justice (2011) Background briefing on the Crown Dependencies: Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/about/moj/our- responsibilities/Background_Briefing_on_the_Crown_Dependencies2.pdf
Office of the Data Protection Commissioner http://www.dataprotection.gov.je/cms/default.htm
Official website of the British Monarchy: The Queen and the UK: Queen and Crown dependencies http://www.royal.gov.uk/MonarchUK/QueenandCrowndependencies/QueenandCrowndepe ndencies.aspx
Schenk, D. (2011) Electoral registration and turnout in Jersey: voter participation in a small jurisdiction http://www.electoralcommission.je/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Schenk- Danielle-dissertation1.pdf
States of Guernsey http://www.gov.gg/parliament
States of Guernsey: Government and Administration: Data Protection http://www.gov.gg/dataprotection
States of Guernsey: Parliament (States of Deliberation): Elections: Electoral Roll http://www.gov.gg/electoral-roll
States of Jersey (2006) Public elections: reduction in voting age to 16 http://www.statesassembly.gov.je/AssemblyPropositions/2006/10195-17544- 6122006.pdf#search=voting%20age
States of Jersey (2011) Report on the 2011 Jersey Census http://www.gov.je/SiteCollectionDocuments/Government%20and%20administration/R%20 CensusReport%2020120808%20SU.pdf
States of Jersey: Government and administration: Consultations: Public Elections Law review http://www.gov.je/Government/Consultations/Pages/PublicElectionsLawReview.aspx
8 States of Jersey Elections http://www.vote.je/get-involved-in-the-states-of-jersey-elections/
Statistics Unit (2012) Jersey Annual Social Survey 2012 http://www.gov.je/SiteCollectionDocuments/Government%20and%20administration/R%20J ASS2012%2020121204%20SU.pdf
Wright, J. (2007) Inquiry into electoral registration 2006 report http://www.gov.im/lib/docs/cso/electoralregistrationreport.pdf
Office of the Data Protection Supervisor Data Protection Act 2002: An overview of the Act http://www.gov.im/lib/docs/odps/overviewdpact2002.pdf
Francesca McGrath Senior Researcher 4 February 2013
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