You can read his piece about the impact of subtle wording changes on poll findings here.

Given that the phrase “electoral reform” has been a widely used term for decades to describe all sorts of different proposals to change the electoral system and given that it has been widely used by proponents on all sides of those exchanges too, I’m surprised that you now are of the view that it isn’t an appropriate phrase for the BBC to use.

But what really baffles me is the continued use of “reform” by the BBC in all sorts of other contexts where the question of whether or not the changes are a good idea is being much debated in political circles and more widely.

Whether it is talking about “syllabus reform” in the UK, “economic reform” in Kazakhstan, “reform” to the political system in Jersey, “economic reform” in Haiti, “reform of the financial services” in Europe, “reform of the Common Agricultural Policy” or many other topics where proposed changes have prominent and vocal opponents, the BBC regularly uses the word “reform”. All of these examples are from stories current on the BBC website and dated as last editied within the last seven days.

My list is not even close to a comprehensive one of the last week alone, nor indeed does it cover such obvious examples as health care reform in the US. Not exactly an uncontroversial issue I hear…

The BBC’s response is:

We understand you were unhappy with reports that the BBC’s political adviser had banned the use of the phrase electoral “reform”, in regards to our coverage of the referendum on whether to change the voting system.

The reason for issuing specific guidance both for election and referendum periods is that “due” impartiality requires the BBC to give particular consideration to the context in which voters are being asked to make their decision. Of course the BBC uses the term “reform” in a number of other contexts, including government proposals on health and education. But the Alternative Vote Referendum is asking a single and very specific question: it is asking the voter to decide whether to support the status quo for Westminster elections, or whether to change to a different system; the question of whether one system is better than the other is, therefore, fundamental to the vote.

The definition of “reform” is very clear, both in dictionaries and in common usage: it means “improvement” or “to make better”. It would, therefore, not be impartial for the BBC to characterise this referendum as being about “reform.” In effect we would be saying to the voter “do you want to stick with the existing system or would you like a better system?” That is not a balanced way to present the question. The paraphrase of the referendum question needs to be “do you want to stick with the existing system or do you want a different system?”

The political context for the government’s health and education “reforms” is different and therefore our judgement about what constitutes “due impartiality” is different. The question (and it is not an issue on which people are about to cast their vote) is more broadly about how to improve health and education, rather than about whether they should be improved. Opponents of the government’s plans, therefore, do not normally raise any objection to the term. Indeed, they often use it themselves. That is not the case with “electoral reform.”

There is a second issue around use of the word “reform” when it is in the context of electoral change. As the Electoral Commission has emphasised, the media has a particular responsibility for clarity in attempting to explain the complexities of the voting systems involved in the referendum. One of the key elements which needs to be explained to our audience, for instance, is that the Alternative Vote is not a system of proportional representation. Yet, for many years, insofar as the public at large understood the term “electoral reform”, it has been closely associated with proportional voting systems. The aim of our guidance, as well as setting out issues of due impartiality, is to encourage staff to use more precise language in helping voters understand what is being asked of them in this referendum.

The guidance does not, as newspaper reports suggested, ban the use of the word “reform.” Obviously it is a term which partial campaigners will use but it will be avoided by our own journalists without appropriate qualification.

Thanks for taking the time to contact us.

I’d like you to reconsider your decision to ban the use of the word “reform” when your staff are reporting or commenting on the proposed changes to the voting system for the House of Commons (as reported in The Independent last month).

Given that the phrase “electoral reform” has been a widely used term for decades to describe all sorts of different proposals to change the electoral system and given that it has been widely used by proponents on all sides of those exchanges too, I’m surprised that you now are of the view that it isn’t an appropriate phrase for the BBC to use.

But what really baffles me is the continued use of “reform” by the BBC in all sorts of other contexts where the question of whether or not the changes are a good idea is being much debated in political circles and more widely.

Whether it is talking about “syllabus reform” in the UK, “economic reform” in Kazakhstan, “reform” to the political system in Jersey, “economic reform” in Haiti, “reform of the financial services” in Europe, “reform of the Common Agricultural Policy” or many other topics where proposed changes have prominent and vocal opponents, the BBC regularly uses the word “reform”. All of these examples are from stories current on the BBC website and dated as last editied within the last seven days.

My list is not even close to a comprehensive one of the last week alone, nor indeed does it cover such obvious examples as health care reform in the US. Not exactly an uncontroversial issue I hear…

So why single out electoral reform for this special treatment, or is the word reform going to be generally expunged from the BBC’s vocabulary? If the word reform is really going to be removed wholesale from the BBC’s output then, whilst a strange decision, I could at least appreciate the editorial consistency. But unless that is what the BBC is going to do, why single out electoral reform?

Yours etc.

The Yes to Fairer Votes campaign is running an online petition to the BBC on this issue. You can sign it here.

I’ve now had a reply:

Complaints on this issue were forwarded to senior figures within the BBC Newsroom and BBC’s political team and they agree that on this occasion it was inappropriate to continue with the commentary and analysis whilst results were being read out. We would like to apologise for the interruption during the announcement.

Well done the BBC for acknowledging the mistake. Fingers crossed for next time.

Running live coverage of the (hugely elongated) Labour leadership election result, during the middle of the second round results being read out the BBC cut away to Nick Robinson talking about how he didn’t quite know what to make of the results for sure so far. So rather than reporting the news, the BBC gave us a commentator telling us they didn’t know the news.

The love of having commentators tell you what you are about to see, what you are seeing and then what you have just seen frequently hugely squeezes out any chance to actually see for yourself.

But to do that even when the commentator doesn’t know? Very poor editorial judgement.

The Scottish National Party has dropped its legal challenge against the BBC’s decision not to allow its leader Alex Salmond to appear in its televised debate in the run-up to the general election.

A judicial review of the matter was scheduled to be heard at the Court of Session in Edinburgh.

You can read the full story here.

Sorry to be boring and quote things like numbers and evidence.

But on the 10pm news you said, “I think both sides agree the Tories have won the politics of the first week”.

I’d have thought the public should get a look in on this and you know what the public’s verdict is?

By a slim lead (within the margin of error, to be fair) the public says that the Liberal Democrats have run the most impressive campaign so far (see http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/2566).

Makes the idea that the Tories have won the politics look a bit different, I’d have thought?

Yours,

One of those horrible people who read numbers and comment online

Hat-tip: Alex Wilcock for the transcript.

Although it’s been widely covered, the coverage has been very similar – taking the top line figures from the report and covering press release without digging in to what the report really says. So if we venture in to the inner reaches of the report, what do we find?

The report is a very welcome piece of path-breaking research, based on in-depth local studies. Given the importance of registration, and the number of policy and organisational options available to politicians and council officials, gathering this sort of information is extremely useful.

An interim report was published in December (which we covered here) and this final report updates that with more evidence collected.

The use of in-depth local studies is a good move, but it immediately raises a caution about the quoting of figures as if they apply to the country as a whole. The report itself says, “the findings [from the case studies] cannot be used to report on national rates of completeness and accuracy.”

However, the report went on to say, “Under-registration and inaccuracy are closely associated with the social groups most likely to move home. Across the seven case study areas in phase two (therefore excluding Knowsley), under-registration is notably higher than average among 17–24 year olds (56% not registered), private sector tenants (49%) and black and minority ethnic (BME) British residents (31%).”

As a result, the 56% has been widely quoted in the media as if it were a national figure, despite the report explicitly saying it isn’t. Take the BBC (“the Electoral Commission has released results that suggests 56% of 17 to 24-year-olds may not be registered to vote”) or the Evening Standard (“The Electoral Commission says that just 56 per cent of young people are registered to vote”). You wouldn’t guess from either of those that “the findings cannot be used to report on national rates”.

What’s more, despite the implicit negative tone of the media’s coverage, the report actually suggests there is good news on electoral registration overall with a long-term decline halted:

Evidence available from electoral statistics and surveys of levels of response to the annual canvass of electors suggests that there was a decline in registration levels from the late 1990s to 2006. The same evidence base suggests that the registers have stabilised since 2006 although it is likely that the completeness of the registers has declined since the last national estimate in 2000.

In addition, the return rate for electoral registration forms across the country, which dropped sharply in 1996-2003 and then declined a little further in 2004 has quickened its recovery: 2007 was up on 2004 and 2008 was up on 2007 by a larger margin. Though the figures are still below the 1996 ones, the trend is heading in the right direction and the figures are higher than in 2005.

Moreover, the figures in the report are based on data taken at one of the worst points in the year for electoral register accuracy.

There is a full update to the electoral register each year, with a new register published on 1 December. It then steadily deteriorates in accuracy through the next year. The register can get updated through the monthly rolling register updates, but people usually leave it until the full register is redone to update their records. If a general election is called, they can however then update their records and still get a vote at their new address.

Therefore, it is normal to see registration levels drop through the year and it isn’t necessarily a cause of worry. By doing their studies on very old registers (eight to ten months old in all the cases used to get the 56% figure and other similar ones), the Commission (and to be fair, they know this and the report makes it clear – if you get to page 16) produced figures which are much lower than if the evidence had been gathered on a new register. Depressing the figures further, the research was done when there was no election in the offing and so people did not have any particular incentive to use rolling registration to update their records.

In other words, the registration figures found are much lower than we’d expect either on a new register or for a general election.

What’s more, the reason for low levels of registration amongst young people in the local studies may have little to do with levels of interest in politics but more to do with mobility:

92% of people who have lived at their current address for five years or more are registered, compared to just 21% among those who have been at their present address for a year or less.

So is it registration or journalism we should be worried about?

One other thing this report tells us is something about the how journalism is works – or doesn’t work. It’s easy to sympathise with hard-pressed journalist taking story and data from reputable source and turning it into story without much questioning. But the data isn’t nearly as uncontroversial as the uniformity of media stories would suggest.

Are the figures for youth registration bad because they’re low, okay because of the time of year they were taken or good because a long-term decline has been halted? You can argue any of the three – and were these figures a matter of political controversy, we’d have had talking heads and quotes arguing the case on each side.

But because there isn’t a National Association for Electoral Registration and Turnout Optimists and there is no argument between the political parties on the statistics, the figures don’t get an external sceptical eye cast over them. Add to this the Electoral Commission’s need to emphasise the importance of people getting registered, which provides an incentive to stress the pessimistic in its figures, and we get just the bad news reported. The good news doesn’t get a look in.

The full report is below and if you need any help to register yourself, visit www.aboutmyvote.co.uk or call the Electoral Commission helpline on 0800 3280 280.

(UPDATE: The Evening Standard, one of the media outlets to get the figures wrong, has now corrected its report.)

Electoral Commission Report on Electoral Registration