We Called Your Councils to Find Out What Happened to Your Postal Votes

The EU Referendum is on Thursday and that's quite a big deal. Only thing is: there's quite a lot of other stuff going on this week. It's June, so people are going on holiday, or to France to watch the Euros, or to Glastonbury to watch a middle-aged man on acid masturbate openly at the Stone Circle.

All of those people – or at least those of them who wanted to vote – had to be super organised and sort out a postal ballot before the deadline on the 8th of June. Applying for a postal vote is a long and arduous process where you have to go on two different websites, print a form out and then send it off by actual old-fashioned mail. After the application has been received, your local council will send a ballot paper out in the post, which you then fill in and send back via post.

But it turns that even if you've applied for a postal vote, you might not actually get one, because with just two days to go, hundreds of people have been complaining about not receiving their ballot papers. Ballots need to get back to councils by 10PM on election day, so if you post your vote after today, it's no longer certain it will arrive in time.

This, you have to believe, is not democracy functioning as it should. Voting should not be an endless process of registration, administration and organisation. It should be easy, quick and available to all – otherwise you run the risk of not having universal suffrage, and instead allowing elections to be decided by people with the most free time on their hands.

Postal votes in the UK haven't been the only problem with this referendum. A "software issue" meant that polling cards were sent out to thousands of EU citizens who shouldn't be allowed to vote. Thousands more votes from British citizens living in Germany were lost because workers were confused by the size of the pre-paid envelopes. And as it happens, most of these problems are likely to affect Remain voters the most, as the majority of polls suggest that a lower voting turnout will make Brexit more likely. Expats – the majority of whom vote via postal vote – are likely to vote Remain because they're not going to want to give up their sun, sangria, and dossing about in the Costa Del Sol. Young people and lefties are also more likely to vote Remain, and 200,000 of them are going to be Glastonbury, so physically unable to turn up to their polling stations.

So in order to provide something close to a public service, we asked people who hadn't received their postal vote to get in touch with us so we could chase their local councils and find out why this supposedly straightforward process has been carried out so extremely terribly. Here's what they had to say.

— Nick Baum (@nick_baum)June 19, 2016

VICE: Hello?
Lewisham Council: Jane speaking. Hi Jane. I was hoping to look into Nick Baum's application; he applied for a postal vote a fortnight ago and nothing's arrived.
I can't. I can only speak to the actual person. We are actually overloaded with people calling in at the moment trying to vote. Is it a massive problem?
At this moment I can't comment because I've got voters who want answers. If you want to phone up after the 23rd then possibly we can have a conversation, but not now. Are you saying you're inundated with people whose postal application forms and postal votes haven't been received?
People wanting to know if they're registered, wanting to know where their postal vote is, whether they've got their stuff. I don't mean to be rude, but I haven't got time to talk to you – I've got voters who want my attention. I'm sorry, I'll have to hang up on you. Okay.

— Hattie Long (@batty_hattie)June 19, 2016

VICE: Hi. I'm looking into the postal vote for Emily Pinfield-Sunderland.
Tower Hamlets: Hmmm. Let me look. They're registered but not for a postal vote, so they have to go in person to vote.

They say they have applied and nothing's arrived yet. Does that mean it's lost in the post?
It means they're not set up as a postal voter so they've not got their postal application in before the deadline. Effectively, this person has to vote in person and they've been sent a polling card.

But if she says she did send her application in on time, is it lost in the post or did you guys mess up?
Either it arrived after the deadline or it was never received. As it stands, we don't have them down to vote by post. Sorry.

— Beth Gribbin (@bethgribbo)June 20, 2016

VICE: Hi. Beth Gribbin has been chasing her application for a postal vote.
Sefton Council: If we have sent out an application form then we do it second class, so she should have received it. If she contacted us then we'd have sent it out. Now, if she hasn't received it then it may have something to do with the post.

You think it's the post being shit?
It may have been, I can't be sure. Can she contact us again? We do advise everyone to get their applications in way before the deadline. If it was before the deadline, she could have contacted us to let us know. Or she could have printed out the application forms off herself online.

I have someone else called Alexandra Davies in your area who says she applied on the 18th and has had a back and forth with your department, and that you said her vote form must have got "lost in the post". She hasn't received another yet.
I can't look into it unless people contact us specifically. Once we've sent them out, we don't know if they haven't received them unless people tell us.

Alexandra says she told you.
I can't go into the details. If she contacts us we'd be able to see.

Why do you think there's been so much trouble trying to sort this out?
You'd have to ask the Electoral Services department, but I will say: once we send the application forms or postal votes out, they do get sent out. We'd never not send them out.

Okay.

VICE: Hi. Joanne Gillan has rung up for a reissue of her vote and still hasn't received it.
Sheffield council: I'm sorry, we really need to be speaking to the person.

Okay. Have you had a lot of people ringing in because they haven't received their postal vote?
We have. We've had a couple of people today ring up saying they still haven't received their postal vote. What we did was send them out on Friday. It's getting really close now, so obviously there has to be a cut-off point. I don't know what we're doing now – let me check with my colleagues what the process is now we're getting so close. [Goes away for a bit.] Okay, if they ring up today before 2PM we are sending out forms by first class post, so they will be able to very quickly return those. If they don't get in touch by then, they'd need to come down in person to the polling station with proof of ID.

In your opinion, is all this trouble on the postal service's end, or yours?
They can go missing. We are totally relying on the Royal Mail. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I'd say they are registered – we've registered them – and for whatever reason they've gone missing. A couple went missing the other day and rather than it being a house, it was going to a block of flats or apartment. Sometimes it's not addressed correctly or the postman puts it in the wrong flat. I've found that's been the problem.

Do you think it'd be easier if it was all done online, voting included?
You'd think it'd be secure to do so, wouldn't you? We do banking online. Central government at the moment haven't gone for that option because I believe they think it's not secure. But if you're going to a polling station you don't even need to bring a polling card – all you've got to do is give your name and address, and nothing is asked for. If you know somebody's name and address and you're the right sex, you can get down there before them and you can use their vote. What's secure about that? If the legitimate person comes in after, your name is crossed off and you can't vote. Online voting would solve a lot of the cases we're dealing with at this point in time. People do go on holiday, people do get sick.

~

Councils are clearly strained under the weight of complaints, giving every indication that the postal service is too flawed – that it has too much room for human error – to handle something as important is this. We can't be expected to deal with this for much longer; individual voting issues – like those of the people who got in touch with us – all add up, and a voting system as outdated as this risks millions of people being made voiceless.

It doesn't need to be this way. Last year, the Speaker's Commission on Digital Democracy recommended the introduction of online voting as an option by 2020, but there hasn't been any progress since. Hopefully after the all the minor disasters of this referendum, our government will start taking those recommendations more seriously.

@hannahrosewens

More on EU referendum:

The Left-Wing Arguments For and Against Brexit

Here's the Weirdest Brexit Propaganda Trying to Swing Your Vote

How Will the Countryside Be Voting in the EU Referendum