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 occasional holiday home. These concerns have been backed up by the experience of some canvassers when calling on such properties although until now the evidence has been more anecdotal rather than systematic.
Last year a note was sent to all the 2,653 registered second homes that had also been used for electoral registration purposes highlighting the law and the circumstances in which using the second home to get on the electoral register would be illegal. 947 homes stopped being used for electoral registration, suggesting a significant problem existed (though some of the 947 may be natural churn – but without systematic data no-one knows for sure).
This time round, Cornwall Council is going a step further with a decision this week that all applications to join the electoral register from properties registered as second homes will be subject to additional checks known as a ‘Type B Review’. This will involve ensuring that second homes are not used for purely recreational purposes but do actually qualify people to join the electoral register.
Many people, both from the worlds of politics and electoral administration, will be watching closely to see what impact this has on registration numbers and accuracy.
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5 Comments
“This will involve ensuring that second homes are not used for purely recreational purposes but do actually qualify people to join the electoral register.”
I can see some grey areas there. Retired people are one, and people whose work doesn’t actually require them to be in any particular place for much of the time. (The sort of people who may be pushing for better internet in Cornwall!)
But on the whole the principle is good and the experience should lead to a better understanding of what the problem is and the fairest way to deal with it.
This may sound naive, but is there anything to stop somebody actually voting twice, if they can register at two addresses?
Eileen – apart from the fact that it’s illegal – there is in fact little to stop people doing so.
The fact that a given person has voted in a given election is a matter of public record, so if you (or the Police or the council) know that Mr J Smith of 60 Acacia Avenue in one ward is the same as Mr James Smith of Flat B, 75 Random Road in another, then you can check the Marked Registers after the election and detect whether he has voted twice.
In practice it rarely happens that anyone can identify who is who and check if anyone has voted twice…
@Eileen Ward-Birch
“This may sound naive, but is there anything to stop somebody actually voting twice, if they can register at two addresses?”
It’s quite legal to be on the Electoral Register in more than one place, as I found out when I moved from Northern Ireland to England between the mid-September date used in Northern Ireland and the 10th October used in England.
It’s illegal to VOTE in more than one place in the SAME election. So if you were on the register in two places in the UK (for a General Election) or in two places in the same Local Authority for a local election, you couldn’t vote twice. But, if you had votes in two different local authorities you could vote twice, even if the these two separate elections were on the same day.
But as Chris says, detection largely depends on the vigilance of parties that beleieve they have been cheated.
Thank you for the clarification.
I would ask for a central registration, but that can be circumvented and if it’s only a few votes here and there it is really not worth the cost and effort. However, it could happen on a large scale, if planned; we have seen abuse of postal votes, why not this?