… The committee was concerned that Mr Williams and Mr Finan were among 22 nationwide that had not included door-to-door canvassing in the process of encouraging more people to register on their district’s electoral roll.
The concern was reflected in the report which stated that an Electoral Enforcement Officer repeatedly failing to comply with their statutory obligations in a way that has an adverse effect on the quality of voter registration, should be subject to enforcement action. …
Note that remarks about having done telephone canvassing in interim years has disappeared , replaced with the words “other sources of data matching” (the Electoral Commission says that no telephone canvassing OR house to house canvassing was done in some years) and Mr Willliams is the only electoral officer in the country soecifically singled out in the Parliamentary Committee interim report for not answering Freedom of Information requests.
The way Mr Williams talks about the problems of canvassing in a rural community makes you wonder just how those EROs in places like Cumbria or Cornwall seem to manage the job, where he cannot. What are they doing right that he is doing so wrong? And how come he doesn’t have the same problem (or the same methods) in rural South Somerset where he does the same job?
East Devon Watch 