Beware the crocodile

Remember the crocodile in Peter Pan? Just when you thought it was safe – ‘tick tock’ came the crocodile. Well it’s a bit like that with the Labour Party and the move towards individual voting registration.

I don’t blame you if you switch off now. After all that’s what the PLP and most of the Labour party did as soon as the process of Parliamentary Boundary Reviews was deferred until after the 2015 General Election. What has not stopped is the move towards Individual voting registration which is scheduled to come into effect in 2015 immediately after the General Election.

An innocuously named report by the Electoral Commission (Data matching pilot – confirmation process) this spring indicates the scale of the challenge involved in individual electoral registration. This was a pilot survey which was designed to test the usefulness and reliability of the proposed confirmation process ie how many of the existing electors can be matched against a national data base compiled by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). This is important as ultimately any existing elector who cannot be matched on either a national or local data-base will be removed from the electoral register.

The pilot involved 14 local council areas across England, Scotland and Wales. Registration entries received a red, amber or green status as a result of the matching process depending on whether they matched clearly (green), less clearly (amber) or not all (red). 25% of the electoral received a red designation. Let’s put it another way over TEN MILLION currently registered voters are on notice to be removed from the register (yes I thought that may command some interest….). Apart from any franchise issues this development has serious implications for jury trials given that jury membership is drawn from registered voters.

As the Electoral Commission notice this process is not uniform across the country. The wards with the highest rate of red registrations are those with a high level of students, young adults, private renters and mobile populations. Sound familiar – yes they are predominately Labour wards (choosing the colour red was slightly unfortunate). The prize for the highest level of voters at risk is claimed by the City Centre ward in Manchester where an astonishing 75% of the existing electorate are at risk of being removed from the register. Overall Manchester is scheduled to lose 36% of its current voters. On a wider level it will almost certainly be inner cities including Tory redoubts such as Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea who are likely to see significant reductions in their registered voting figures.

A number of MPs and councillors seem remarkable sanguine about these figures. After all most of these ‘voters’ don’t vote. Possibly true but what this complacent argument ignores is that once off the register they will never be open to persuasion. More bluntly it is the registered electorate that determine the distribution of Parliamentary constituencies (memo to MPs the Boundary Review has been deferred not cancelled). If the electoral process continues as the pilot report indicates we could see nearly 20-25% of existing Labour seats disappear after the next General Election.

Now how this story actually ends will be determined by the interest that local councillors and MPs take in the electoral process. Traditionally electoral registration has been a Cinderella service for most councils and given the scale of cuts to local authority budgets one that is unlikely to feature as a front line service. Well that attitude has to change and quickly.

The last household canvass will take place in spring 2014. From summer 2014 existing electors whose details match the DWP database will be automatically confirmed. All other electors whose entries are not confirmed and those who have moved house will be asked to re-register by providing unique identifying information – a National Insurance number and date of birth. Critically there is scope to incorporate a local data matching stage that could significantly increase the matching rate but, as you might expect, there are cost implications. There is also the opportunity to undertake more dynamic electoral registration campaigns nationally and across conurbations.

There will be a ‘dry run’ of data matching in all councils this summer which should give all councillors the figures they need to decide the scale of the problem in their boroughs. The real challenge is whether this will be seen as a financial priority at a time when other pressures are competing for political attention.

To be fair to the Electoral Commission and Cabinet Office both are willing to consider all options to improve the accuracy of the registration process. What has been missing is a sense of political urgency. If we care about an effective democracy we need to be a bit more focused on electoral registration in the coming months.

Paul Wheeler is founder of the Political Skills Forum and writes about local politics.