On the 17 December 2004, the London Assembly's 2004 Election Review Committee released its report into the Mayoral Elections earlier in the year. Referring to those who had requested a postal vote, its Chairman, Brian Coleman, reports:

423,488 Londoners were registered to vote by post in the 2004 elections. 159,704 of them did not vote. It is convenient to assume that the majority of these people simply decided not to vote on this occasion, but this is not necessarily the case. Thousands of postal ballot papers were simply not delivered.

Royal Mail's quality of service is sufficiently poor that at least one London Borough Returning Officer decided to use the Borough's own staff to deliver postal ballot papers to electors. The Returning Officer for Greenwich and Lewisham told us that he had decided not to use Royal Mail's services when he was told that only four out of five postal ballot papers would be delivered, leaving one in five postal voters effectively disenfranchised.

These findings are food for thought for the Government, which is seeking to promote postal voting and, despite the recommendations of The Electoral Commission, is still prepared to entertain the idea of all-postal ballots. The Electoral Commission has predicted continued increases in the numbers of electors registering for a postal vote. Our report shows that there is some serious work to be done in London to prevent postal voting becoming more like a lottery than an election.

You can download a pdf file of the 88-page report here (1.3MB).