Thank you so much.
I'd like to start by thanking the committee for the opportunity to contribute in a small way to this study, which is a great honour.
I am a professor of politics and public policy at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, in the United Kingdom. I think other witnesses are much better positioned than I am to describe the Canadian system and the experience of Canadian voters. Instead, I want to focus my comments on describing the U.K. experience of overseas voting, which I think might be helpful, alongside a few comments about the international experience as well.
The United Kingdom has recently removed a 15-year limit on the exercise of voting rights for citizens living overseas. This enfranchised, in theory, many voters in the 2024 general election. There are some estimates—they are only estimates, as there are no official figures—that there could be around five million people eligible to vote in U.K. general elections who are living overseas.
The U.K. system relies on two mechanisms to enable such people to cast their vote. The first is postal voting, where citizens can apply for a postal vote in advance. Importantly, these ballots do include a list of candidates. They are the same as normal ballots that are issued on election day. Therefore, they cannot be published or posted until very late in the electoral cycle. The second mechanism is proxy voting, where you can nominate someone you trust, who is a resident in the United Kingdom, to vote on your behalf on the day of the election. An individual can cast up to four votes on behalf of overseas voters.
The system works in one sense: It enables many people to vote who would not otherwise do so. At the last general election, 191,000 people were registered to vote in the election. Roughly half of those were registered to vote via post, and it's estimated that 52% were actually then able to return that ballot. Around 50,000 people were voting from overseas via the post. There's no data, unfortunately, on the number of overseas proxy voters, but clearly proxy voting is very important in the United Kingdom to enable, in practice, people to cast their ballots.
There are also some problems in the United Kingdom, which will probably strike a similar chord to the Canadian story. Postal votes take a long time to be dispatched and returned around the world. Some votes, in practice, are not counted and are not included in the final results. The parliamentary timetable is a challenge. Overseas electors often have little knowledge about their electoral rights and the process. Out of that possible five million eligible people, very few actually have their vote cast and counted at the end of the process.
As a scholar of elections and electoral integrity around the world, I'll add a couple of other very quick observations. It's clear that measures such as special ballots, postal voting and proxy voting are very important in terms of enabling people to vote who might not otherwise be able to do so. It does bring greater inclusion into the voting process as a result. However, these measures inevitably bring complexity and administrative challenges for electoral officials.
Factors that are also important in terms of the safe delivery of elections are therefore ensuring that the electoral officials receive sufficient resources and investment in training to be able to run the elections, and making sure that the electoral timetable makes the election deliverable. Investing in voter education and voter understanding of the process—what's possible and what they need to do for their part of the bargain to make sure their vote is counted—is essential as well.
The committee might want to consider some options such as proxy voting, which is widely used in the United Kingdom, to enable more Canadians to cast their vote, but support for electoral officials and continued investment in the wider electoral framework in Canada are important as well.
Thank you for the time. I'm very happy to take any questions you may have.