3. What discussions has the Commission had on how to inform the electorate of the Senedd elections in May 2021 despite coronavirus restrictions? OQ55564

The first step of the campaign focused mainly on votes at 16. We've developed a range of activities for use in classrooms and youth groups. During the lockdown, these have also been adapted for home use. For the election campaign, staff are developing materials and plans to ensure that our key message about the election, that voting in Senedd 2021 is the way to get your voice heard in your Senedd, reaches all parts of Wales. We will focus on those newly enfranchised by the Senedd and Elections (Wales) Act 2020, but we will also be addressing traditionally underrepresented groups.

Thank you very much, Llywydd. I’m particularly pleased to hear about the work that’s been done with young people. I want to ask what further work the Commission can do to ensure that people who don’t have English or Welsh as their first language understand that they have a right to vote. There will be many people who don’t have official citizenship, but who are Welsh citizens, in our view, who will have the right to vote for the first time. So, would it be possible, perhaps, to provide materials in relevant languages for those people who may have come here as refugees or to work?

We do work with the Welsh Government and the Electoral Commission and with local authorities as well, of course, to ensure that everyone is aware of the new arrangements and the new franchise for the elections. I accept entirely the point that you make, that we need to do this in languages that are spoken by the citizens of Wales. I will ensure that those who work on this issue do so, because I support what you are saying entirely, that the information that is available about the opportunity is available in the languages spoken in Wales.

I think the connection went down there, Llywydd. Did you manage to get to the end?

We got the gist.

Yes. I think probably—. Diolch. Right, thank you. Huw Irranca-Davies.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Llywydd, I wonder if I could ask you whether there have been any discussions within the Commission, in your work on informing the electorate about the Senedd elections next year, about the applicability of postal voting, particularly with the coronavirus restrictions that we're increasingly seeing across parts of Wales. I realise that this is predominantly a matter for the Electoral Commission and for electoral officers in discussion as well, but it does seem to me and to other Members of the Senedd increasingly that we may face movement restrictions and, as such, postal voting might be a larger part than normal of the electoral process for next year's Senedd elections.

Thank you for the question. I hope that the broadband connection is now stabler than it was during my previous answer. I'm just outside the Chamber and I would have expected that the broadband connection would have been stable enough to reach a few metres for that.

In terms of the question you raised regarding how the election of May 2021 is to be conducted, these are obviously issues that are now becoming very much discussed between the various players who ensure that the election is to happen—local government, the Electoral Commission, Welsh Government and ourselves in this case, for the Senedd election—and discussions are ongoing as to how coronavirus regulations will mean that there may be different ways of undertaking that election possibly needed. So, we will need to be looking at every single way to make the election as safe as possible, if coronavirus regulations remain in place, but democracy needs to be served and everybody needs to have access to that democracy. So, we will need to be making sure that we are able to work and conduct those elections in a way that enables everybody to take part.