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 would be fully in place for 2015 but with voters registered only on the old household system retaining their right to vote for that election. This was dubbed ‘carryover’.
However, other aspects of the original Government proposals were deeply troubling. The Conservative Party sought to end the existing system of compulsory registration (it is an offence not to return a form when asked to) in favour of a purely voluntary arrangement. The Electoral Commission estimated this could diminish the electoral roll to only 60% of its present size.
Paul Tyler, Mark Williams MP, and I fought hard from the Lib Dem side of the Coalition to alter these proposals. We argued that some form of legal obligation was the cornerstone of a comprehensive electoral roll. Without it, less engaged (usually poorer, more transient) groups would likely find themselves not only disenfranchised but also at a disadvantage in getting mainstream credit. This would at best have an impact on social mobility, and at worst direct vulnerable people into the hands of payday loan merchants. Meanwhile, the change would have made jury service voluntary too: a transition from ‘trial by your peers’ to ‘trial disproportionately by your more affluent, politically engaged peers’.
On the strength of these arguments, we won our case, and the Bill published for parliamentary consideration in 2012 retained a legal obligation. But there was more work to do.
New data from the Electoral Commission showed that – even without the transfer to individual registration – some six million eligible voters are missing from the register. Under pressure from Liberal Democrats, the Cabinet Office identified ways in which ‘data-mining’ could be used to identify unregistered electors on government databases. We have been encouraging the use of Students Loan Company records, those of ‘deposit protection schemes’ (now compulsorily used by private landlords for their tenants), and of credit referencing agencies. The extent to which this will be done is now contingent on regulations to be passed later this year, but we are heading in the right direction.
Additionally, the Government now estimates that it will transfer two thirds of those on the existing household register on to the individual register automatically by looking at DWP databases. These will identify voters whose electoral registration address is still accurate, and keep them on roll.
With all these extra safeguards, the transition to IER has a much greater chance of working well. Yet still no one can be sure that the move to IER will be a success in time for ‘carryover’ to end in December 2015. To that end, Paul Tyler and I have argued that we cannot pass the Bill, in full knowledge that the transition may not be successful, without incorporating some mechanism to deal with that problem if it arises.
In the last few days we negotiated an additional amendment, to provide for the ‘carryover’ to continue until December 2016, unless Parliament votes for it to end on the original schedule at the end of December 2015. That way, if the transition has been a success, Parliament can end the transition early. If not, there is another year to make progress.
This is a pragmatic approach, and reflects the shift we have achieved in the Government’s attitude. From an instinctive position fermented in Conservative Campaign Headquarters – “who cares if people fall off the electoral register; they don’t vote for us anyway” – to robust legislation with a Lib Dem stamp.
Now that we have got the legislative framework for IER broadly right, the transitional phase is a challenge which should go well beyond the office door of Town Hall electoral administrators. It is a task for every Lib Dem MP and councillor to make sure that those for whom they do casework are on the electoral roll. By providing that help, Lib Dems will genuinely be doing their bit to make this big but necessary change to electoral registration a success. And there may even be some votes in it!
* Chris Rennard is a former Chief Executive of the Liberal Democrats. He has led for the Party in the House of Lords on the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill
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6 Comments
This is a commendable piece of unsung legislative effort which is exactly why we can be proud of our influence in government. But I’m a little nervous, from a liberal perspective, to read about data mining and scouring credit reference records. It seems that the liberal approach should be to make it as easy as possible to register to vote but then to leave it to the individual to decide if they want to.
This is a great improvement on very poor legislation. Which makes it simply poor and superfluous legislation. Individual registration is neither neccessary nor desirable. Simple checks and modern technology can stamp out cheating which takes place in a couple of dozen constituencies.
Anyone should be allowed to register and should be shown the current/prior register entries when they do so. It should be an offence for anyone (a) not to name all potential registrees as well as him/herself and (b) to not report any failures to represent the previous electors at the property appropriately.
Yes. Well Done Chris. A great, but somewhat unsung effort and all the more commendable for it.
I disagree with Charles Beaumont. Scouring databases is the modern approach. With so much data in computers out there, even the most liberal amongst us must agree that there is no hiding place for those who want to ‘drop out’, however lovely that may sound. With Society’s benefits come Society’s responsibilities even though we rail against the impositions of the State. We must all of us be ready to stand in line for jury service etc.
Tony Dawson is quite draconian ,and I think unnecessarily illiberal, in his wish for a completely accurate past ,as well future, electoral list.
I agree that we supply past information from the list and from the mentioned databases, and so send the IER forms to all possible such voters.
I would like Chris’s take on how this would affect the LibDem vote. Positive or negative?
On the plus, the disheartening long lists of people put down as ‘living’ and so able to vote in Labour households should begin to diminish as to produce this would mean a serious forgery of many forms.
But I know that this has been factored in.
Voter registration obligatory? Our prisons would be full/deficit crisis solved if this law were actually enforced. If it were enforced, pour encouragement les autres, people might actualy register.
They might also vote if legislators were restricted to passing laws that included the resources to rnforce them. Anyone considered that one reason people don’t vote is that Fantasy Football is much more fun than Fantasy Politics?
the answer to Tony is that a person’s politics is like their religion, personal, therefore an individual thing. Some whole households don’t register at present because the head of the household isn’t interested.
There is still a carry-over of people who didn’t register to avoid the Poll Tax.
Once this is in place can we have two things please.. a carrot and a stick.. ie an inducement to vote, such as a voter card tombola in each polling station; and a sanction for not voting, such as a loss of entitlement to something, maybe even a lowering of your personal tax allowance.?
Well done Chris.!
@James Murray It really is important to try and agree ‘fair rules’ for election processes without just trying to seek party advantage and I have honestly tried to do this over the almost 14 years in which I have dealt with these issues in the House of Lords. Some of these issues are , for example, fiercely controversial in the US where the Republicans are often trying to make it harder for people to register to vote and also harder to vote. Democrats in the US are constantly trying to resist these ‘undemocratic’ manouevres. As to the effects in the UK; it generally helps the Conservatives if it is harder to get to vote (the most literate in English/older/less likely to move etc. are much likely to be registered) and it helps Labour if a greater proportion of what should be the electorate is actually registered (younger people, frequent movers, private tenants and those less literate in English etc. are generally less likely on the voting registers). So for Lib Dems, there may ‘swings and roundabout’ from all this in terms of party benefits/disadvantages depending upon who your opponents are. We have just tried to argue about how best to ensure that everyone who should be registered to vote is registered to vote and that nobody who shouldn’t be registered to vote isn’t. I checked with one of our MPs offices recently and got them to check their casework records – these showed that over 1,000 people who they have helped in that constituency in recent years and should almost certainly be registered to vote in it are not actually on the electoral registers and therefore able to vote for the MP who helped them!
@Philip James No people don’t go to prison for not registering to vote, but not complying with the registration process has been the subject of potential fines since 1921 and the Conservatives under Mrs. Thatcher increased the level of fines cery considerably as some people thought that they might evade the poll tax by not being on the electoral registers.