Archive for electoral registration
Campainging for Afifa Pervez in Brent
Brrrrrrr. It was off to the cold streets of Wembley Central this morning to go canvassing for Afifa Pervez in the ward which, during the 2001 census, has the highest proportion of overseas-born residents in the country. One quick look at the canvass cards showed how multicultural the area has remained and the doorsteps quickly [...]
Electoral registration: the group that gets overlooked
Whether or not someone lives in private rented property is one of the most important factors in predicting whether or not they will be on the electoral register, new research by the Electoral Commission has found.
How many people are prosecuted for failing to fill in electoral registration forms?
In amongst the debate over individual electoral registration, one question has been whether it should remain a legal obligation to complete registration forms sent out by the local council. But how meaningful is the current legal obligation?
Unsolved problems of individual electoral registration
So far, the planned move from household to individual electoral registration in Great Britain (catching up with the changes made in Northern Ireland several years ago) has generated rather more political heat than light. But after the announcement from Nick Clegg at the last Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions that he is minded to part of the government’s [...]
Sadiq Khan, master of political caricature, I salute you
Listening to Deputy Prime Minister’s Question Time and also the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee’s hearing this week, I was tempted to blog about how in a throwback to the worst of New Labour, many Labour MPs seemed to be confusing something being a “civic duty” with it being a legal requirement. After all, it [...]
Nick Clegg signals government set to drop proposal to make electoral registration voluntary
Answering questions in Deputy Prime Minister Question Time this afternoon, Nick Clegg said that he is “minded to change” the proposals currently out for consultation that would make electoral registration voluntary following the concerns expressed by the Electoral Commission and others. Good news. He also reiterated his support for providing returning officers with the necessary [...]
Labour’s muddle over electoral registration
Last year, Conservative minister Mark Harper got up in Parliament to announce the government’s plans to speed up the introduction of individual electoral registration. At the time, the news was fairly low key and uncontroversial. It was the previous Labour government that had legislated for its introduction following repeated calls from all political parties and [...]
Michael Meacher has me confused over individual electoral registration
Dear Michael Meacher, I’m puzzled by your views on individual electoral registration. You call it “insidious”, “underhand”, “utterly anti-democratic” and “Tory”. Yet the legislation for it was introduced by a Labour government, Labour’s 2010 manifesto boasted about Labour’s achievement in passing that legislation and – as far as I can see – you didn’t rebel [...]
What’s the point of switching to individual electoral registration?
As some background to the current debates, I thought it useful to revive and update an old post of my on the subject as there has been relatively little coverage of the reasons why it has been supported by all parties (including Labour, who even talked up their achievement in introducing the first legislation for individual electoral registration before 2010, in their last general election manifesto).
