Registration Time

A month today, 20 April, is the last day that anyone can register to vote in this year’s General Election. You can register online here, provided you know your National Insurance number.

The last time the country chose its government, in 2010, at least six million people (a tenth of the entire UK population), while eligible to vote, were not registered to cast their ballot. They include 50% of all 18-24 year-olds (as opposed to only 6% of those aged over 65) and 44% of private renters (versus only 10% of homeowners).

Individual Electoral Registration, which began last summer, will make things worse. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater, it may do away with the outdated notion of a ‘head of household’ (by requiring people to register themselves) but it will disenfranchise whole swathes of society in the process.

As a result, there are already an extra million missing voters across the UK compared with last year, with over 100,000 in London alone. They include people who had a postal vote in last year’s Local Elections but could not be ‘data-matched’ by the DWP and councils since and so will need to register again individually if they wish to keep their vote. In Islington, there are almost a thousand people in this category. A large proportion of the missing million are students, especially freshers, threatening to skew election outcomes in university towns like Durham (where the electoral roll is down by 9,000 on last year) and in marginal seats in places like Cardiff and Brighton. Elsewhere, the problem is with young people turning 18: in Liverpool, for instance, there has been a 93% drop in the number of people registering to vote as they come of age.

It is after this May’s election though that Individual Electoral Registration is really going to bite. In Tower Hamlets, for example, 45% of previously registered voters could, as things stand, then drop off the electoral roll. Nationally, the worst affected groups will be young people, students, older people in care homes, private renters, transient populations and ethnic minorities, predominantly in urban areas. In some constituencies, these demographics will be decisive come election time.

If we stand and watch, then hundreds of thousands will lose their vote, and with it their voice. That will do profound damage to our democracy, further concentrating political power in the hands of those who already have it and leaving the playing field even less level than it is now. It will also mean that, in 2020, many MPs and councillors will lose their seats as a result of constituency and ward boundary reviews. Juries, even, which are drawn from the electoral register, will cease to reflect our society as a whole.

But a counsel of despair is no use to anyone. The Labour Party at every level instead must act.

As Leader, Ed Miliband has recently called for a national voter registration drive. It’s important that he continues to lead on this from the front. Others in the Shadow Cabinet can do their bit too. Ed Balls can argue for more funding for electoral registration efforts, Tristram Hunt can spearhead a campaign to get students to register on campus, Sadiq Khan can urge people of every background to register for the sake of British justice, and Chuka Umunna can remind people that not being on the electoral register is bad news for your credit rating.

Labour councillors can scrutinise their councils’ arrangements for Individual Electoral Registration, checking that they’re up to scratch. They can ensure too that their local authorities’ Electoral Registration Officers are getting the corporate support they need from other departments, such as Housing, Adult Social Services and Council Tax. Plus, they can insist that almost every interaction their council has with residents presents an opportunity that should be grasped to encourage them to register to vote.

In Islington, where the population is young and churn is high, as well as mailing out masses of voter confirmation correspondence, we have put posters urging people to register in bus shelters, leaflets in libraries and articles in the local press. We have also attended Freshers Fairs and sent canvassers door-to-door to explain the new system to residents.

Labour Party members, supporters and activists, PPCs and MPs can all get behind campaigns such as Bite the Ballot and urge their constituents and neighbours to make sure they are on the electoral roll.

The arrival of Individual Electoral Registration represents the biggest change to our voting system since the introduction of universal suffrage in the 1920s. There is a crucial General Election in fewer than 50 days’ time. People have a month left to register for it. After that, if we’re not careful, hundreds of thousands of people in our communities will be left with a stake but no say.

And some of them won’t even know it until they arrive at the polling station and get turned away.