Cornwall Council members such as Alex Folkes have been pushing for some time for the council to tighten up its implementation of electoral registration rules in the face of the county’s large number of second homes.
Where people genuinely split their time between living elsewhere and living in a second home in Cornwall, they can register at both addresses (though vote in a Parliamentary election at only one of them). However, there are widespread concerns that many people who register to vote at a Cornish second home are not qualified to do so as they only use it as an …
Back in 2009 I speculated that the plan for a centralised version of the country’s electoral registers (the CORE project) should win a prize for worst government IT project:
Back in early 2001 I sat in a consultation meeting where the project was being planned, with the data available on CD (ah! those were the days) and then securely online in early 2002 …
One of my favourite memories of this whole saga was when both the Electoral Commission and the Government in fairly quick succession carried out a consultation that went over pretty much the same ground. As a result,
The highest profile issue at Deputy Prime Minister’s questions today was the issue of press phone hacking in the light of the allegations concerning Milly Dowler and the News of the World.
Harriet Harman asked Nick Clegg to back Ed Miliband’s call for a general public inquiry into illegality in the newspaper industry. As someone has said, this is a bit like holding an inquiry into why we get bad weather. In a sign of divisions within Labour, Chris Bryant, in contrast, has called for a more narrow inquiry.
Nick Clegg stopped short of backing an inquiry but, instead, emphasised the importance …
This morning saw the launch of a plan for giving away bank shares from Liberal Democrat MP Stephen Williams. Laid out in a pamphlet published by CentreForum, Stephen Williams’s plan is to give shares owned by the government in the banks to everyone on the electoral register. A floor would be set so the shares could not be sold until they had passed the price paid by the government and individuals would only keep any gains made above that floor price. In other words, as the shares rise in price and get sold the government gets back the funds it put into the banks and, if the banks do well, the public gets to profit from that.
It’s a neat idea, and one of the first substantive plans for what the government could do with its 83% of RBS and 41% of Lloyds. As is to be expected with any plan for such a controversial area, it raises a number of questions.
First, the government only gets back the money put into the banks if people sell their shares. If people hold on to them, those funds do not come back to government – and in particular that means a large source of possible government funds ends up being highly dependent on what can be very volatile stock markets. Such uncertainty would apply to other policies too – including direct government selling of shares on the stock market – but it is still an issue.
Second, even leaving aside the uncertainty, would this route raise more or less money for the government than a straight-forward sell off of shares? Stephen Williams and colleagues think so, as their Q&A explains,
The absolute and relative size of the Government’s shareholdings in Lloyds Group, and RBS make it conventional exit through share sales impossible at a reasonable price. In other words, shares would have to be sold at a substantial discount over many transactions over a number of years. This increases the risk that the public would never get its money back – as has happened in the US, where the Obama Administration has lost at least $10bn in selling a tranche of its GM shares.
Third, the degree to which shareholders have failed to hold boards of directors to account has been bad enough even with big institutional shareholders, let alone with mass small-scale shareholdings. But given how poor institutional shareholders have been, would this situation really be that much worse?
Fourth, by giving the same amount of shares to everyone, there is a neat piece of simplicity combined with fairness. Because the sale of shares would be subject to capital gains tax, the initial allocation of shares would have the virtue of simplicity whilst subsequent capital gains tax revenues would mean that the richest end up paying more of what they have been given back in tax.
Fifth, although I said “simplicity”, relying on the electoral registers raises issues of principle and practicality. The principle is about whether the electoral register should be used solely for electoral purposes. The practicality is about the accuracy of the electoral register. The offer of money in return for being on the register would most likely be an extra incentive for people to register, but what about then deliberate fraudulent register entries? Having a system that is resistant to fraud makes the idea not quite as simple as it looks at first.
(Strictly speaking, it’s not just the electoral register the proposal uses. As the Q&A explains, shares would go to “those on the electoral roll for UK elections who are resident in the UK for tax purposes. In addition, non-UK nationals serving in HM Forces and their dependents should be eligible on the same basis”.)
In other words, there are plenty of questions that the scheme raises, but as this is a proposal designed to help set the political agenda rather than a finely worked out imminent piece of legislation, that is as much a compliment as anything else. It’s a good contribution to the debate.
Over on the Open Rights Group blog, Jason Kitcat has recounted the recent meeting hosted by the Cabinet Office about the government’s plans to improve data sharing across the public sector in order to improve electoral registration, particularly as we shift to individual registration (the benefits of which I’ve blogged about here).
These plans could range from the helpful (such as giving people the option when, say, telling the TV Licensing Authority that they have moved also to have the information sent to update their electoral register entry) through to the very different (such as linking up tax records …
In the run-up to the general election, I wrote about Havering Council’s stated public policy of rejecting applications to join the electoral register from people if they were made on forms downloaded from the Electoral Commission’s own dedicated website. It was a policy that caused complaints from residents as well as raising questions about why a council would blanket reject applications from people using the Electoral Commission’s own nationally advertised website.
This policy arose from Havering Council’s reaction to a previous set of attempts to make false electoral register entries, which led it to decide that it would not accept …
With the Yes to AV campaign getting into full swing (and attempts by the No camp to do the same), it is perhaps unsurprising that the majority of the recent commentary on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill has revolved around Part I of that Bill, which deals with the AV referendum (and the earlier post on LDV by Keith Sharp about the message of the pro-AV campaign is essential reading). But in the excitement, we seem to have allowed a very significant deadline to pass by – the deadline for the compilation of Electoral Rolls on …
It is nothing new for a government to be talking about improving electoral registration by matching data between different sources. What is different about Nick Clegg’s latest comments on the subject, in a speech to the Hansard Society, is that the talk is now becoming much more specific, with pilot projects starting next year.
Local councils, for example, hold name and address information about people in several different databases. If they are able to make use of the data from other sources to highlight either gaps in the register, or suspicious entries that may be the result of fraud, this …
By Helen Duffett
| Thu 23rd September 2010 - 6:08 pm
The Liberal Democrats have today launched an organisation to communicate with the party’s overseas supporters.
Liberal Democrats Abroad aims to keep members and supporters in touch with the UK party, to encourage supporters to join, and to register to vote in the UK.
In a statement to Parliament yesterday, Mark Harper (Minister for Constitutional Reform) announced that the Government will speed up the introduction of individual electoral registration by axing Labour’s plans for an interim phase of voluntary individual registration. Instead, individual electoral registration will be introduced in 2014.
The current electoral registration system is based on one registration form being delivered to each household, with the head of the household completing the form on behalf of
Acting Prime Minister… are we allowed to call him that? No, okay then: Holding the Fort Prime Minister Nick Clegg has an article in today’s London Evening Standard setting out how he thinks the way in which people vote can be improved by the next general election, in 2015.
He looks at three issues. First, Nick notes the current unfairness that unequal constituency sizes mean that the votes of 87,000 voters in the East Ham constituency are worth less than the 66,000 voters living 10 miles away in Islington North: “So, if you live in Islington, your voice counts for more.” …
Here’s your starter for ten in our Saturday slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate:
In many states in the US people register themselves as “Democrat” or “Republican” (with also various options for “Independent” etc.) when they join the electoral register. These lists can then be used by the parties to hold primaries or caucuses to select candidates, letting only registered supporters of the party to take party. Open primaries* where anyone can vote are also held in some places, but if you only want your party’s supporters to vote in a primary then wrapping registering your …
Welcome to a series where old posts are revived for a second outing for reasons such as their subject has become topical again, they have aged well but were first posted when the site’s readership was only a tenth or less of what it is currently or they got published and the site crashed, hiding the finest words of wisdom behind an incomprehensible error message. This one is from Spring last year and has been slightly updated.
After a long period of stalling, the Labour Government finally announced in spring 2009 a timetable for switching Britain’s electoral registration system from one …
First, the good news: all the reports so far indicated a strong surge in people registering just before the deadline earlier this month. The Independent has some further figures to add to earlier reports. Thankfully, Havering Council with its hostile approach to people using the Electoral Commission’s website seems to be very much the exception. Whilst its electoral division has called “ridiculous” the number of people registering at the last moment, other councils have welcomed the surge of interest rather than criticised it.
Then the not so good news…
Allegations of postal vote fraud: the scale of the allegations, …
Early signs are that as many as 500,000 – 750,000 people rushed to join the electoral register just before the registration deadline earlier this week – hopefully reflecting a surge in interest in politics, particularly from younger people.
The evidence though is rather thin at the moment, so a simple request – check with your council how many people have joined the register in the latest rolling register update and post the answer below.
(If you’re an agent or campaign manager, remember that you can ask to get these names and addresses – which if you are doing any addressed election material …
Perhaps not the fashionable thing to say these days, but Parliament deserves credit for getting one legal change right: altering the law a while back so that the deadline for joining the electoral register falls during a general election campaign rather than before it.
This time that means the deadline for registration fell on Tuesday – after several days of heavy media coverage about the election and after the surge in interest from younger people courtesy of the first TV debate.
Imagine all the frustrations if people have been enthused and then found the law meant it was too late to sort …
Until yesterday, Havering Council was telling residents that it would reject any rolling registration applications that were not made on the council’s own form – despite the fact that such rejections would be a breach of the law. In a bizarre twist, it also meant that Havering Council was telling people who had filled in an electoral registration form via the Electoral Commission’s heavily advertised website, AboutMyVote.co.uk, that those applications were invalid.
Labour will act ‘and legislate if necessary’ to end ‘unacceptable situation were 3m eligible voters cannot vote because not registered’
Anyone who qualifies to register is already legally obliged to, so what might this reference to possible legislation mean?
It could mean making the punishment for non-registration more stringent. It’s rare for someone to be prosecuted and it would be very much in line with the style of Labour’s approach to other issues to go for tougher punishments. However, whilst the reasons for non-registration have often been …
Latest figures from the Government’s Defence Analytical Services show that more than 34,000 full-time members of the Armed Forces are not registered to vote.
That is 19% of the services, almost one in five of those in uniform – their votes that could be pivotal in a tight contest.
The Electoral Commission has been running a campaign for months to try and persuade those in uniform to register.
However, according to a survey, more than half the military has not seen a leaflet and only 5% have had a Powerpoint presentation on the subject…
As a circular from the Electoral Commission explains:
Until now, members of HM Forces and their spouses or civil partners registering through a service declaration have had to renew their registration every three years. From commencement of The Service Voters’ Registration Period Order 2010 on 19 March 2010, the length of registration based on a service declaration is now five years and so, from 19 March 2010, service voters will only need to renew their registration at the end of a five year period.
The extension of the length of registration will apply to all service personnel and their spouses or
A quick update to my post which pointed out how the media had comprehensively misreported findings about how many people are registered to vote, painting an unduly pessimistic picture. The Evening Standard at least has now corrected its report.
The Hansard Society’s latest Audit of Political Engagement has added to the view that there is likely to be another risible turnout at the impending General Election. The study finds that only 54% say they are certain to vote.
The Hansard Society have offered some ideas about how to boost turnout. They suggest that more should be done to target groups such as the ‘disenchanted and mistrustful’. Apparently, a quarter of adults, mostly young and working-class, fall into this category of voters who distrust politicians but not yet entirely hostile.
Earlier this week the Electoral Commission published a new report, The completeness and accuracy of electoral registers in Great Britain, looking at how electoral registration is working in the UK.
Although it’s been widely covered, the coverage has been very similar – taking the top line figures from the report and covering press release without digging in to what the report really says. So if we venture in to the inner reaches of the report, what do we find?
The report is a very welcome piece of path-breaking research, based on in-depth local studies. Given the importance of registration, and the number of policy and organisational options available to politicians and council officials, gathering this sort of information is extremely useful.
An interim report was published in December (which we covered here) and this final report updates that with more evidence collected.
The use of in-depth local studies is a good move, but it immediately raises a caution about the quoting of figures as if they apply to the country as a whole. The report itself says, “the findings cannot be used to report on national rates of completeness and accuracy.”
However, the report went on to say, “Under-registration and inaccuracy are closely associated with the social groups most likely to move home. Across the seven case study areas in phase two (therefore excluding Knowsley), under-registration is notably higher than average among 17–24 year olds (56% not registered), private sector tenants (49%) and black and minority ethnic (BME) British residents (31%).”
As a result, the 56% has been widely quoted in the media as if it were a national figure, despite the report explicitly saying it isn’t. Take the BBC (“the Electoral Commission has released results that suggests 56% of 17 to 24-year-olds may not be registered to vote”) or the Evening Standard (“The Electoral Commission says that just 56 per cent of young people are registered to vote”). You wouldn’t guess from either of those that “the findings cannot be used to report on national rates”.
What’s more, despite the implicit negative tone of the media’s coverage, the report actually suggests there is good news on electoral registration overall with a long-term decline halted:
Evidence available from electoral statistics and surveys of levels of response to the annual canvass of electors suggests that there was a decline in registration levels from the late 1990s to 2006. The same evidence base suggests that the registers have stabilised since 2006 although it is likely that the completeness of the registers has declined since the last national estimate in 2000.
In addition, the return rate for electoral registration forms across the country, which dropped sharply in 1996-2003 and then declined a little further in 2004 has quickened its recovery: 2007 was up on 2004 and 2008 was up on 2007 by a larger margin. Though the figures are still below the 1996 ones, the trend is heading in the right direction and the figures are higher than in 2005.
Moreover, the figures in the report are based on data taken at one of the worst points in the year for electoral register accuracy.
There is a full update to the electoral register each year, with a new register published on 1 December. It then steadily deteriorates in accuracy through the next year. The register can get updated through the monthly rolling register updates, but people usually leave it until the full register is redone to update their records. If a general election is called, they can however then update their records and still get a vote at their new address.
Therefore, it is normal to see registration levels drop through the year and it isn’t necessarily a cause of worry. By doing their studies on very old registers (eight to ten months old in all the cases used to get the 56% figure and other similar ones), the Commission (and to be fair, they know this and the report makes it clear – if you get to page 16) produced figures which are much lower than if the evidence had been gathered on a new register. Depressing the figures further, the research was done when there was no election in the offing and so people did not have any particular incentive to use rolling registration to update their records.
In other words, the registration figures found are much lower than we’d expect either on a new register or for a general election.
What’s more, the reason for low levels of registration amongst young people in the local studies may have little to do with levels of interest in politics but more to do with mobility:
92% of people who have lived at their current address for five years or more are registered, compared to just 21% among those who have been at their present address for a year or less.
So is it registration or journalism we should be worried about?
One other thing this report tells us is something about the how journalism is works – or doesn’t work. It’s easy to sympathise with hard-pressed journalist taking story and data from reputable source and turning it into story without much questioning. But the data isn’t nearly as uncontroversial as the uniformity of media stories would suggest.
Are the figures for youth registration bad because they’re low, okay because of the time of year they were taken or good because a long-term decline has been halted? You can argue any of the three – and were these figures a matter of political controversy, we’d have had talking heads and quotes arguing the case on each side.
But because there isn’t a National Association for Electoral Registration and Turnout Optimists and there is no argument between the political parties on the statistics, the figures don’t get an external sceptical eye cast over them. Add to this the Electoral Commission’s need to emphasise the importance of people getting registered, which provides an incentive to stress the pessimistic in its figures, and we get just the bad news reported. The good news doesn’t get a look in.
The full report is below and if you need any help to register yourself, visit www.aboutmyvote.co.uk or call the Electoral Commission helpline on 0800 3280 280.
(UPDATE: The Evening Standard, one of the media outlets to get the figures wrong, has now corrected its report.)
This change will (thanks to an amendment to the British Nationality Act 1981, adding Rwanda to the list of Commonwealth countries) come in to force for elections from 10 March.
The Electoral Commission has told me they are about to send a circular out to electoral administrators informing them of the change.
Mailings intended to tell people who have recently moved how to get on the electoral register have mistakenly been going out to people who have not moved in years.
A circular from the Electoral Commission sent to councils around the country explains,
As you will be aware, the Commission is currently running a campaign to encourage home movers to register to vote. It has become apparent that there is a problem with one of the data sources being used for the campaign, resulting in some people who have not recently moved home being sent the mailing in error. We are
Back in July last year I blogged about the changes in electoral registration rules which would see people being giving the option to supply additional information, namely their National Insurance number, date of birth and signature, during this year’s electoral registration cycle. That’s part of the phased move to individual registration and gathering this extra information will be the basis for future extra security checks when people vote in person.
But wait, what’s this that the Telegraph “revealed” over the weekend? Ah, that’d be, “Britons to be asked for NI number, date of birth and signature to get right …
The electoral register is the definitive record of who can or can’t vote in a particular election. Missing people means people aren’t able to exercise their democratic rights. Erroneous entries open up possibilities for fraud and for people who shouldn’t vote getting to cast a ballot. Statistics derived from the register are widely used to inform and shape other decisions. So having accurate registers is important.
Knowing how accurate our registers is a tough question to answer. Estimates as to the theoretical electorate if everyone entitled to vote registered – and no-one else – can be derived from population statistics. But those statistics are not perfect and the margins of error on the final calculations make it hard to judge whether our current rates of electoral registration fall at the good or bad end of the fairly narrow band that separates one from another. 98% registration rate would be good; 89% would be bad.
The Electoral Commission has therefore recently been carrying out some in depth research using a series of local case studies scattered across the country. An interim report on them has just been published. What does it say?
The Ministry of Justice is running a consultation on whether bodies such as marketing firms and charities should be able to buy copies of the electoral register to use for their direct mail and other operations. There is a high chance this review could lead to a change in the law.
There are currently three electoral registers:
The full electoral register, which is used for running elections and which is available to political parties and election candidates for them to contact voters and other electoral purposes. It is also available to various law enforcement and other public sector organisations for use in
There are many contenders for the “worst Government IT project” crown, but the CORE (Co-ordinated Online Record of Electors) project is a strong contender. Eight years on from me sitting in a meeting being told it would start appearing that autumn, it is still years away from delivery – and has just been put on indefinite hold.
In its original guise of LASER (Local Authorities’ Secure Electoral Register), and now as CORE, the project promised to make all the electoral registers for the country available from one central location, in a consistent data format. Since 2000 political parties have to check the validity of donations they receive, which frequently involves checking a name against the electoral register. However, the registers are currently split amongst several hundred councils, in a myriad of formats and, even if you request to receive all the monthly updates, the records which parties have are frequently partially out of date. The result? A mix of inaccurate checks and lots of time taken up both by parties and council staff in phone and email exchanges dealing with queries.
Back in early 2001 I sat in a consultation meeting where the project was being planned, with the data available on CD (ah! those were the days) and then securely online in early 2002. Eight years on, none of that has been delivered.
The planned delivery dates as of earlier this month were still several years away – and now the Minister of State, Michael Wills, has just announced a new, indefinite, delay in order to review how plans to introduce individual registration will fit with CORE.
The delay is perhaps typical of the last eight years. At one level it is reasonable – how you can you proceed with an electoral register project without looking at how changes in electoral registration might affect it? – but at another level it just shows up bad management. The introduction of individual registration has been discussed, consulted, thought about and chewed over already for many years. And it’s only now the Government has decided to stop and think about how it fits with CORE?
After a long period of stalling, the Government recently finally announced a timetable for switching Britain’s electoral registration system from one based on households to one based on individuals. The Electoral Commission, Conservative Party and Liberal Democrats have been calling for such a switch for a long time, but what’s the reason for making the switch?
The current electoral registration system is based on one registration form being delivered to each household, with the head of the household completing the form on behalf of everyone there and sending it back (“household registration”).
paul barker @David Evans
In London we ran on Competence & Hard Work, we made gains in places where we already ran The Council, everywhere else we went backward or went...
Peter Hirst Entering a race implies usually a commitment to win it. The idea should be not to win a hyporthetical AI race but to find the best compromise between using it w...
Peter Hirst You might get more volunteers if it was clearer that they have influence over who is approved and selected for Westminster seats compared with the Westminster o...
Peter Hirst You don't mention our so called independent nuclear deterrent. There is no reason why we can't merge it with France's. Why on earth do you need two nuclear dete...
David Evans The one thing that this article shows is that it is impossible to establish a strategy that makes us clearly different from the other parties if we stick to our...
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The shame of Liverpool Labour councillors taking their allowances but not turning up to do the work
Should Labour reconsider the Brexit red lines?
Raising a flap about letterboxes
Arriving at one of East Finchley's ghost platforms
Restrained
Chase Park fair photos
paul barker 
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David Evans 