Electoral registration reform: public backs rest of the world over Labour by more than two to one

New research shows that by a margin of more than two-to-one the public backs changes to the electoral registration system that would reduce the scope for fraud.

The Liberal Democrats, Conservatives and Electoral Commission have all repeatedly called for the system of household registration, currently used in England, Scotland and Wales, to be abandoned in favour of individual registration, as is used in Northern Ireland.

The current system allows one person in a household to fill in a form on behalf of all the people living at an address. However, a system of individual registration could allow the collection of extra personal identifiers to ensure that people are really who they say they are when they take part in the electoral system. The introduction of personal identifiers to the postal voting system has brought a welcome reduction in the opportunities for fraud there, but it still leaves open other avenues of fraud that individual registration would severely curtail.

The Committee on Standards in Public Life this week published their third report into public attitudes towards standards of conduct in public life. It found that nearly two-thirds of the public back a move to individual registration, whilst less than one-third oppose it (63% – 29%).

One question for anyone working in the financial services or police sectors: I have always thought that individual registration would also make fraudulent registration for the purposes of financial fraud much harder and would, therefore, be widely welcomed in these sectors. Yet I’ve never seen any lobbying by them in favour of this change. Anyone know why?