Shops and schools proposed for council election pilots in Wales

Currently your polling station is assigned according to where your live - but could this change?

People could be allowed to vote in supermarkets or schools in some parts of Wales at next year's council elections.

New "flexible voting" proposals could see polling take place over multiple days or a weekend before an election, in an effort to boost turnout.

The Welsh government has asked if councils would like to pilot the ideas.

But a body of electoral officials said there was not a "huge" amount of time to implement the proposals.

The Welsh Conservatives said some might see the proposals as an effort to "gerrymander" the elections, while Plaid Cymru welcomed the plans.

Turnout in Wales was 42% at the last council elections in 2017.

Next year's elections will be the first for local government in Wales where 16 and 17-year-olds can take part.

• Long queues as polls close for Welsh elections

• At least 35,000 young Welsh voters not registered

• 'I always vote - this year I didn't'

Officials are considering letting voters cast ballots in any polling station in their local authority area.

It could mean people could vote in person somewhere more convenient to them, instead of the polling station allocated according to where they live.

The Welsh government is looking at whether voting in places like supermarkets and leisure centres could be allowed, or in schools and colleges.

Early voting - as seen in the US elections last November - could also form part of the pilots.

An experiment was held with supermarket voting in Croydon in 1998

Polling station staff generally have paper lists of electors to check off when people arrive to vote, but the Welsh government says "digital solutions" would be required for some of the ideas.

Laura Lock, deputy chief executive of the Association of Electoral Administrators, said the announcement had "some really good ideas in it".

"It is key that electors can only vote once, and they vote in the right polls," she said.

"But it's a very large administrative challenge, because while it might not seem too much of a radical idea, we do need to make some big changes to enable this".

Ms Lock also called for the Welsh government to make decisions as "early as possible", with the elections happening on 5 May.

"We want to embrace all of the possibilities that the pilots will bring us but nine months doesn't give a huge amount of time to ensure that that can be done.

"I think it will be a challenge. But I don't think that it's impossible."

The Welsh government's senior legal advisor, Counsel General Mick Antoniw, said the administration wanted to make it as easy as possible to vote.

"Democracy should be a part of all our lives and if more of us take part, it will lead to better policy making by elected representatives and policies which truly represent the views and experiences of all of us," he said.

"These voting pilots will help us to better understand how we can increase turnout. We believe making voting more flexible and easier will bring democracy closer to everyone."

But Welsh Conservative constitution spokesman Darren Millar said: "The people of Wales already have the chance to vote early and from home via the use of a postal vote, we don't need major changes to a system that already serves our democracy well.

"Some may see this a desperate attempt by Labour ministers to gerrymander the voting system."

Plaid Cymru's spokesman for the constitution Rhys ab Owen said: "Any attempts to boost voter turnout are greatly welcomed and long overdue."

"This must go hand in hand with wider electoral reform including greater political education in schools and a fairer voting system in the form of STV. A healthy democracy relies on both an engaged electorate and accessible elections."

The 2021 Senedd election was the first in Wales where 16 and 17-year-olds could take part.

But tens of thousands did not register in time to do so, with figures suggesting 54% failed to register.

The UK government experimented with voting in supermarkets back in the 1990s, when polling stations were opened at two shops for the 1998 council elections and London mayoralty referendum.

Supermarket car parks also saw use as polling stations in England last May, according to the Local Government Chronicle.