Electoral registration: for the sake of our democracy we must get it right

Well no can say that they weren’t warned! LabourList has been a consistent Cassandra warning of the implications of the rushed and ill considered  introduction of Individual Electoral Registration (IER) by the Electoral Commission.

So congratulations to Ed Milliband for raising the alarm over the slump in the level of registration amongst students in halls of residence. Let’s hope the combined efforts of local councils, political parties and civic campaigns such as Bite the Ballot can restore as many of these missing voters before the closing date for registration for the 2015 General Election 2015.

Bad as the current situation is there is however worse to come. The Cabinet Office have agreed to ‘carry over’ those voters who have so far failed to provide supporting information to stay on the electoral register for the General Election.  That’s good for the next election but these voters are scheduled to be removed from the register in December 2015.

A recent survey from the LGA Labour Group indicated the scale of the problem in individual boroughs. In Manchester over 50,000 current voters are at risk. In Newham – in common with many London boroughs- the numbers of voters carried over is high too at over 21,000. Reading is on course to lose 11,000 voters or 12% of its electorate. Overall up to three million voters have been ‘carried over’  – able to vote in the General Election are in danger of losing their vote in subsequent elections. Nor are these ‘at risk’ voters uniformly spread across the country.

IER discriminates against the young, the mobile and those in private rented accommodation: those who live in urban areas. If future parliamentary boundary reviews are conducted on this reduced register then we are likely to see a massive transfer of political power from towns to shires and this a time when the actual, as opposed to the registered,  population of urban areas is  increasing.

And it doesn’t stop there – the electoral register forms the basis of jury service. So we face a collapse in the presence of 18-24 year olds on juries in most of our major towns.

So what to do? Thankfully Labour local government is thinking beyond the next General Election. Its leader Cllr Jim McMahon has put forward a series of recommendations to restore faith in the registration process. These include:

– Re-instate the right of institutional landlords – universities and those providing accommodation to the elderly and vulnerable –  to register their residents as a group.

– The Cabinet Office to conduct a  rapid survey into the way that IER is operated in Australia which achieves far higher levels of registration at a much lower cost.

– The Political and Constitutional Affairs Select Committee to hold an urgent inquiry into how the Electoral Commission has undertaken the introduction of IER in the UK and the changes that need to be made to avoid a similar situation arising in the future.

Let’s hope whoever is in government after May understands the importance of restoring credibility to voter registration and asks some searching questions about the stewardship of the Electoral Commission of this vital democratic function.

Finally for all those friendly trolls who comment – ‘what’s the problem it’s so easy to complete the form. If you can’t be bothered to register then you shouldn’t be able to vote anyway’.

We have taken a relatively straightforward process and made it much more complicated. Cash strapped local councils are now asked to write to 48 million voters directly as opposed to 20 million households – a huge paper chase where electoral registration forms compete for attention with the pizza leaflets and the latest offers from pay day loan companies. We have questioned people’s eligibility to vote on the basis of inclusion on a single data-base maintained by the Department of Work and Pension (not itself the epitome of good government). We now ask married women who want to change their names to provide two forms of evidence before they can go back on the register.  And because it is now unclear who should include ‘attainers’ ie those aged 16/17  their numbers have collapsed (in Liverpool the number has fallen from 2635 to just 76.

We should have used the introduction of IER to make the process of voter registration simpler and fit for the 21st century (and there are numerous examples overseas that we could have learnt from).  Instead we are spending more to get a poorer level of registration.

We may have to ‘muddle through’ for the next General Election but for the sake of our democracy we need to get it right for future elections.