GreenFlint: The great vote theft

It's extraordinary that the week after the release of the film Suffragette should see a threat to deprive millions of citizens of their votes. In Enfield up to 9,000 people - 4% of the electorate - could lose their votes on December 1st.

It's all due to the government's approach to Individual Voter Registration. This replaces the old system of household registration and, in principle, is probably better. But the government has chosen an implementation method that doesn't make best use of IT. It's now over ten years since a leading building society told me how they use multiple online databases to check the identities of applicants for bank accounts. Yet - and perhaps predictably - the government has chosen to ignore this and make life difficult for at least some citizens.

Not content with this the government decided this year to give local authorities one year less to finish checking the identities of everyone on the old Register who hasn't yet applied to join the new one. According to the Electoral Reform Society:

The government recently brought forward the date for transferring to the new system to December 2015 - one year earlier than previously planned,
meaning nearly two million people could fall off the register for no good reason.
We believe that¹s unnecessary, and wrong. And we are working hard to change it.
- See more at: http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/voter-registration#sthash.GjryK2WN.dpuf

"nearly two million people could fall off the register for no good reason. .. that's unnecessary, and wrong."

The ERS notes that

"areas with a high concentration of certain demographics – students, private renters and especially young adults" – are particularly in danger of having low registration numbers. .... urban and socially deprived areas where registration is low are likely to have fewer MPs per person than affluent areas where registration is high."

So the current process will have two significant results:

The people, such as the young and ethnic minorities, least likely to vote for the government will be least likely to be registered and thus able to vote.
The areas in which they are concentrated will have fewer MPs than others.

Enfield has two safe seats but the loss of one third of 9,000 voters would be enough to change the result in the third, Enfield North, where Joan Ryan won by just 1,086.

That is not a result which will much worry David Cameron but it ought to worry the rest of us!

PS: If you haven't registered yet do it now at https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote.

- See more at: http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/voter-registration#sthash.GjryK2WN.d

GreenFlint

Friday 23 October 2015

The great vote theft

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