Political

Electoral register reaches record size, refuting individual registration scaremongering

Time for a return to my ‘don’t believe the electoral registration Armageddon myths’ theme.

This time it is the provisional electoral registration total for the European referendum. As the Electoral Commission reports, the size of the electoral register has reached a new record high:

Data collected from the 382 local voting areas shows the provisional size of the UK and Gibraltar electorate indicates a UK record of 46,499,537…

The previous record UK electorate for a similar franchise to that used at the EU referendum was the 46,354,197 voters registered prior to the UK Parliamentary General Election in 2015.

So much for individual electoral registration causing a huge problem with the number of people registered…

There is, certainly, an issue about the insistence of the Conservatives on using the December 2015 electoral registration figures for the next Parliamentary boundary review as those figures are from part way through the full transition to having a smoothly running individual electoral registration system.

But when it comes to people being registered ready for the big voting occasions, all those stories about registration Armageddon turned out to be wrong. Again.

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