Over on epolitix, Lord (Chris) Rennard has a piece calling for changes to the electoral registration system to place the burden on individuals rather than households following the news that at least 6 million people are unregistered:
All parties and the Electoral Commission are agreed in principle that the electoral registration system should change to put the responsibility on individuals rather than households.
But the Commission report shows that our existing system is not as good as we thought and there are clearly dangers in making any changes. The biggest dangers to the integrity of the process would be to suggest that people do not have to comply with it and to fail to carry out full canvasses to complete the process.
There were concerns expressed about these issues from all parts of the House of Lords last Thursday. There was a general feeling that parties should work together and with people outside party politics to ensure that rules that are vitally important to our democracy are seen to be fairly drawn up.
Today I am asking the government how they will respond to the Electoral Commission’s recent report. Above all, I want to make sure that they do not do anything that weakens the integrity of our democratic process.
You can read the whole piece here.
* Nick Thornsby is a day editor at Lib Dem Voice.
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3 Comments
“All parties and the Electoral Commission are agreed in principle that the electoral registration system should change to put the responsibility on individuals rather than households.”
And all parties are, in my view wrong (as a rule of thumb,the Electoral Commission is almost always wrong).
Every single person living in every single household in Britain should, in my view, have the legal responsibility (with effective sanctions) to ensure that every single person in that household is registered each year. There should also be cross-referencing rights to major databases to ensure that the Electoral Registration Officers have eveey bit of information they can use to make the list as accurate as possible.
The Government will soon publish their response to the Commons Select Committee report on this issue and the consultations folllowing their white paper.
This is the link to my speech in the recent debate on the subject in the House of Lords:
http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=9749&st=12:21:17