Question: Regional referendums in the UK are imminent. How should the government be going about ensuring a respectable turnout?

Sam Younger: I think you're right to start with the regional referendums because they are our biggest challenge of the year.

In relation to elections, our role is mostly advisory; it is regulatory only in terms of party and candidate finances.

However, for the first time, with the referendums I now have the job of chief counting officer.

Clearly, whether it's the government or the campaigning organisations themselves, there is a major challenge in the regional referendums.

There are already campaigns up and running in the three northern regions about the elected assemblies, but I think the biggest difficulty is going to be surrounding the changes in local government that might be a consequence if the vote goes in favour.

Because, in a sense, the initial referendum question carries a relatively simple message: "Do you want an elected regional assembly?"

But in addition of course, there's a very complex question that follows on from that. The electorate in the areas affected will be asked to choose which of the options of patterns of unitary local government they would prefer for their region. Those options are inherently complex and it will be a real challenge to all of us to make sure that people understand the options involved and the eventual consequences.

Not least, in terms of how to express this on a ballot paper itself. In a sense, if people are really going to understand the detail they are going to need maps in front of them.

So this is one of the areas that we all need to look at very carefully.

Question: Is there not an argument that this increasing number of elections actually mean that people are less inclined to vote?

Sam Younger: There is some evidence that when there are more elections people are less inclined to vote.

The concern that people won't turn out twice is part of what drove ministers to combine European parliament elections with local elections in June. I also think that's part of the reason, given the experiences of postal voting up to now, why government has decided that the referendums should be all-postal.

But it is an issue that needs to be thought about carefully and it's a relevant issue for us in the consideration we've been giving to local electoral cycles. We have been asked to review the frequency of local elections by the deputy prime minister and will report at the end of January.

That's one of the dimensions: what the public thinks about more elections. There is a wider issue which goes beyond this particular review, which I think is going to be worth exploring and that is the overall pattern of elections. Obviously the regional assembly referendums mean there may be yet more.

I'm not sure if there is any easy solution and I certainly don't think that decisions about the frequency of elections should be driven by concerns about voter turnout. They should be driven by what is the most logical structure for accountable government and by what can be accepted by the voter.

Question: On that note, is there a case for the UK to adopt fixed term elections like there are in the United States?

Sam Younger: We've said for a while, though we haven't got to it yet, that we will take a look at the case for a fixed term Westminster parliament - of course there is a fixed term for every other legislature which is elected in this country.

The fact that there is a variable timetable for Westminster certainly does create complication.

However, I think its fair to say that there is little enthusiasm in government for fixed terms for Westminster. I'm sure that it is a debate which will be ongoing and is one that we will look at, at a later stage.

But of course it's not only the variable term for Westminster which creates a complication. There is also the fact that local elections and the Scottish parliament, and the National Assembly in Wales are all on four-year cycles and the European parliament is on a five-year cycle.

So even if you had fixed term elections for Westminster, it still wouldn't produce a completely uniform system.

There is something attractive, in purely intellectual terms, in thinking you could have a four-year cycle for all elections with no two falling in the same year, but I don't think that we should be looking at things in terms of neatness. There are many other drivers there.

Question: What electoral pilot schemes are you planning for the elections in June?

Sam Younger: The pilots that were rolled out in 2002 and 2003 were pilots where local authorities were asked to volunteer to undertake a scheme.

Over these two years, there have been a pretty solid lot of pilots - about 70 all-postal and 30 electronic.

The difference this year is that because local elections and European Parliament elections are being combined, it's not going to be a free for all with councils bidding for schemes. Government has said that there should be common conditions for voting throughout the whole of any region where a pilot is held.

Ministers were keen to look at the possibility of all postal voting and some e-pilots and they asked us to look at which of ten European Parliamentary regions might be suitable.

We recommended two regions firmly: the North East and the East Midlands, and government has been exploring whether a third region would be viable.

We didn't recommend any e-pilots across a region because we had reservations about the time available for procurement and given the lack of experience among local authorities of e-piloting, we think it would be a fair risk to force a whole region to undertake an e-pilot and I think government has accepted that.

This is not to say that we don't want to continue expanding e-voting. We all feel that its something that needs to be explored further so that we get to the point that we can potentially roll it out in the future.

Question: Could these pilots boost voter turnout?

Sam Younger: All postal voting has demonstrated through the pilots that there is a very real participation benefit.

On average turnout is almost 15 per cent higher than in a polling station election.

Although we have recommended to government that it would be a good thing to roll out all postal voting to local elections as a matter of course, there are a number of measures that need to be put in place, relating to security and secrecy of the ballot.

One critical one, which I hope that government will adopt, is the recommendation that we should move from household to individual registration.

This would mean that you would get the signature of each individual voter on the registration form which would make the return signature on a postal vote a real security check.

We also recognise that there are still those people who really value going to a supervised environment physically, to cast their vote. So we have recommended that there should be a minimum number of what we call "delivery points" in each electoral area. It means there is somewhere in a constituency where a voter can go to deliver their ballot personally.

Question: Are there any plans to reduce the voting age to 16?

Sam Younger: We're currently in the final stages of a review into both the voting and candidacy age, though it is quite clear from the responses to the review that much the greatest interest is in the voting age.

We are pleased with the widespread response that we've had on this issue and we have made a particular effort to get comments from young people.

The thing that has struck us is that there is a wide range of views but no very clear cut view. Even among young people, there is by no means any overwhelming majority on either side of the argument.

We have found this in every forum where we have tested it in the form of a vote. For example, at an event in Cardiff, at the end of a discussion with assembly members, we asked the audience of 15 - 18 year olds to vote on whether there should be a reduction in the voting age and there was only a single vote majority for not reducing.

When we pressed those that voted for not reducing the voting age, it came down to them feeling that they weren't informed or ready for it. Others are adamant that at 16 they are quite ready to take on the responsibility of voting.

Question: What stage have you reached in your review of party funding?

Sam Younger: We've completed an initial consultation period and have received a lot of responses from political parties and others.

We want to make sure that we base our recommendations on as wide a public debate as possible and to this end we are planning to hold a number of public hearings around the UK between now and the end of March.

The aim of this further stage of consultation is, in part, to enable us to dig a bit deeper into some of the responses we have already received, but also we hope that by staging these events in public, we will attract some media coverage, including from the like of ePolitix.com, which will in turn open up a wider debate on the issue.

We hope to finish this exercise by the end of March because we don't want to get it mixed up in the campaigns for local or European elections.

We will then come up with our report sometime after the European elections.

Question: In the American elections, Howard Dean has had great success in attracting online donations. Do you think that this will be paralleled in the UK in future elections?

Sam Younger: I don't know about the same level of success but I'm sure that parties in this country are looking hard at the American experience and studying what the potential is.

It's quite clear that the use of email and the internet are growing features of political campaigning.

I think its actually developed more slowly than some would have expected. I remember a number of people predicting that 2001 would be the first internet general election.

We conducted analysis of the use of the internet in the 2001 general election, which pointed to a growing, but not overwhelming use.

We also looked at whether there was a case for regulating activity by the internet. Our conclusion at that time was, that due to the difficulties of regulating the web, and also a desire not to put in place regulation which may stifle its development, it wasn't the right time.

I think its fair to say that whether it's fundraising or keeping in touch with activists, email and the internet are going to become increasingly common tools.