Tag Archives: individual electoral registration

Lord Rennard writes… Individual Electoral Registration: a journey from Tory instincts to Lib Dem legislation

By Chris Rennard | Thu 24th January 2013 - 5:37 pm

In 2003, the Electoral Commission recommended that Great Britain should follow the example of Northern Ireland and move to a system of Individual Electoral Registration (IER), where everyone fills in their own form. Labour havered for six years, fearing that ‘their’ voters might not register individually. It took until 2009 for them to introduce framework legislation to bring in individual registration at some future point, with no guarantees as to exactly when.

When the Coalition took office, the two parties agreed to speed up Labour’s glacial process. Ministers settled on a transitional period encompassing the next General Election. The new system …