By Dr Larissa Peixoto Gomes.
It must be said that Wales is a place of complex identity that I would never claim to personally understand. Many Welsh people see themselves as British, others see themselves as British and Welsh, others as Welsh and British, others still as Welsh only (Henderson 2021). Some that I have spoken to claim that they have been colonised by the English, some that they are part of the British empire. Yet, despite its complex and often contradictory nature, I did find points of similarity with my own place of origin and helped contribute to the academic debate.
Throughout the devolution process, Wales has taken the British/English institutions that they were left with and mostly maintained how they functioned under British rule, at best making incremental changes rather than making it their own, despite having the freedom to do so. When devolution finally came about, Wales and Scotland chose the same type of mixed-member proportional system, adding a proportional element to the already present pluralist system. It created a complex voting system that is misunderstood by most and has led to an abstention rate as high as 53% for Senedd elections. Wales was already a Labour stronghold, which could explain the impetus to maintain, at the time, a system that is widely accepted to return legislatures that are often ideologically and regionally unrepresentative. Currently, the government and the Senedd have been making an effort to reform the electoral system in various areas, which is where I came in.[1]
The view from outside
Welsh Government was scouring the globe for best practices in electoral administration, as the rules around elections, what is normally referred to as electoral reform, had already been the topic of an expert report (McAllister et al. 2017). Specifically, they wanted to explore ways to improve voter turnout and to understand whether issues of safety were keeping marginalised people from running. Like many other governments, they commission experts to write reports on topics they are looking to better understand, and they often do so through the Wales Centre for Public Policy (WCPP), at Cardiff University, which had just happened to hire me, in 2021, during the Covid-19 pandemic.
As political scientists, we often discuss political opportunity and change but are not always on the practical side of that. The meetings mostly involved civil servants, and it was crucial to have them be honest about the political context and the actual scope for change due to the steep learning curve about Wales that lay ahead of me. The process itself involved deciding which aspects of electoral administration they wanted to tackle, guiding them through the political science, while they guided me through the politics, i.e., how much they were willing and able to change things.
During these discussions, I was able to make the case for the broadest spectrum of possibilities so that there would be a “menu” of sorts. Yet it was important to demonstrate not just the many possibilities they could choose from, but that by pulling on one thread, another might unravel. For example, increasing the number of polling stations to help with voter participation is a fine idea in principle, but it’s not going to make a difference if people don’t have a way to get to them. This process also included going beyond the Anglo-Saxon Commonwealth and the Global North for cases, considerations around offline electronic voting and its potential for transparency, access, and data, and clarifying understanding that to discuss inclusion and safety measures for marginalised candidates, the whole potential politician pipeline had to be reviewed. These and many other building blocks had to be carefully worded to ensure that the goal remained: ensuring that people who weren’t going to the polls or submitting their ballots found a way to do so, even if that mean overcoming obstacles or disengagement. If the goal is enfranchisement, it has to be more than who isn’t in the room, but why, and what can we do to bring the room to them.
Ultimately, the report Reform of electoral law and practice included early voting, special voting arrangements (innovative electoral practices, as per their jargon), candidate and agent safety, campaign finances and spending, and electoral management bodies. The SVA section included postal and flexible voting, offline electronic ballot boxes, and ways to make voter registration easier and more accessible. Presentations played a key role, where the practices were explained in detail and with examples, such as demonstrating how electoral data repositories work.
The Elections and Elected Bodies (Wales) Bill was passed on 9 July 2024. Items included were an electoral administration body, automatic voter registration, an online platform that centralises election information, specific services for inclusion of marginalised groups aiming for diversity in candidacies, and increased campaign finance rules and oversight. Meanwhile, what seemed to be their biggest concern at the time, spoiled ballots in postal voting, does not feature in the new law. In the final debate, Members of the Senedd (MSs) voted for the bill claiming its importance for Welsh democracy (Plenary 09/07/2024). Two of my biggest concerns, lack of physical access to polling stations due to transportation and lack of secrecy in voting for blind people, went unaddressed, but the hope (that most fragile and beautiful of things), is that these will be considered and improved one day.
A relationship between academia and policy-making
Writing reports and evidence[2] is a great way to do some literature review and keep up with the research out there, but it is good to keep expectations low. The Reform of electoral law and practice was published in 2022, with something here and there alluding to it, but nothing concrete. Impact can indeed take a long time and I moved to a different department at Cardiff University.
At one point, Laura McAllister invited me to write a piece of evidence for the Senedd with her, regarding job sharing for Welsh politicians. Having witnessed and read about the experience of collective candidacies in Brazil and elsewhere, I did feel I had something to contribute, so Laura and I submitted our evidence.
I was then invited by the Senedd’s Business Committee to submit written evidence and attend the oral evidence session on the Senedd Cymru (Electoral Candidate Lists) Bill, which proposed the application of gender quotas in the now closed-list proportional representation system of Wales. Sadly, the bill was withdrawn by Welsh Government, probably due to fear over constitutional issues and that the UK government would challenge it.
I have been in other meetings with Senedd civil servants, have submitted more written evidence in job sharing and the bill submission process, was interviewed as a case study for Senedd engagement, spoke at The Learned Society of Wales about how to give evidence, and participated in discussions on the Diversity and inclusion guidance for political parties. Five years after I had started at Cardiff University, I am still a foreigner, but one who has been able to write other works about Wales. I find myself particularly concerned with transportation for MPs and the location of polling stations, something that hasn’t been taken into much consideration.
Validation, citations, and impact
As academics, we tend to look for validation in publication first and then, in citations. Being cited, even to be criticised, means that our peers have judged our work valuable enough to be repeated, judged next to theirs, improved upon. We do not often consider the possibility of actual change to the system being made by us. And our evaluation systems often do not take into account anything but peer-reviewed publications, in the ‘correct’ journals or publishers.
As an immigrant and a non-white woman, there is a feeling that I am not allowed to be wrong, which means that if they do nothing, it’s fine, but if they do something on my advice and it fails, it’ll be my fault. They won’t look to blame me, no one will say my name, but many therapy sessions will be spent on it.
But I have found that being a foreign academic in the UK, having earned my degrees in Brazil, has been one of my strengths (not that I haven’t face my share of prejudices). Not just because I came from the Global South, not just because I came from a country with an imperfect, but very good electoral administration system, but because an interdisciplinary social sciences and comparative methodology training taught me to look beyond the country and attempt to understand the framework that sustains it. I found that being able to ask them to change “the way things were”, putting my finger on those dusty corners that no one had wanted or thought to touch really opened doors and pricked up ears. However, actually working on it, being possibly responsible for people’s access to the polling station, reminded me about the humanity of the process.
[1] Wales has now fully reformed its electoral system to closed list proportional.
[2] For those not into the British lingo, “evidence” can be oral or written evidence, which are submission of expertise to politicians within the context of their respective legislature and a topic.
About the author
Dr Larissa Peixoto Gomes is a postdoctoral research fellow on the ERC-funded QUALREP project and is based at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.