Electoral Commission says people risk being disenfranchised if new system of voter registration is brought in too soon

The electoral watchdog has advised peers to block the government’s plans to delete up to 1.9 million people from the voting register in December.

Ahead of a debate in the House of Lords next week, the Electoral Commission warned that there was a risk that people could be disenfranchised at next May’s elections because the government was trying to bring in its new system too soon.

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The row has broken out because ministers decided over the summer that they wanted to move from the old system of household registration to the new system of individual registration by December this year – 12 months earlier than planned.

In a briefing note for peers, the commission said: “Taking into account the data and evidence which is available at this point, and the scale and importance of the polls scheduled for next May, we continue to recommend that the end of transition should take place in December 2016 as currently specified in legislation.

“We therefore recommend that parliament does not approve this order.”

There are 1.9 million people on the old register who are due to be deleted by the end of the year, possibly because they are no longer at that address but possibly because they have not yet signed up as individuals under the new system.

Labour’s latest figures suggest about 1m entries will end up being removed, after a drive to sign up as many as possible over the next few weeks.

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As well as the consequences for May’s elections, there is concern that David Cameron’s boundary changes will be based on the new register as it stands in December. This means those not on the register will not be counted as members of the voting population when it comes to carving up seats. Labour argues this will mean a bias against voters naturally inclined to vote for them, including a high proportion of private rental tenants, students, and minority ethnic voters in urban areas.

Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, has said this amounts to an attempt to rig the electoral system, and last month appointed Gloria De Piero to his cabinet as a dedicated shadow minister for young people and voter registration.

In his party conference speech, Corbyn said: “Two million or more people could lose their right to vote. From today Labour starts a nationwide campaign for all our members to work in every town and city, in every university as students start the new term, to stop the Tory gerrymander.”



With the Lords due to debate the issue on Tuesday, the commission has advised parliament not to approve the order as the government has acted without reliable information about how many eligible voters are being removed.

It said there was a potential benefit to the accuracy of the register – with any retained entries that were redundant or inaccurate being removed – but also a risk to participation in the important set of elections in May 2016, with eligible electors being removed.

The government says the system is ready in time and the missing voters are simply inaccurate or outdated entries on the register.

John Penrose, the Cabinet Office minister responsible for the issue, said he was confident that electoral registration officers will have found all the people who have dropped off the list, as they will have been contacted up to nine times about the change and sometimes more.

In a parliamentary debate, he said: “The only entries left will be the people who are no longer there – the people who have moved, died or were never there in the first place because they were fraudulent.

“They will have had their doors knocked on and their phones rung, and they will have had letters and emails. At the end of that process, the chances of a genuine voter with a pulse who lives in a particular area being disfranchised are vanishingly small.”

