In just a few weeks’ time, 1.9m people could drop off the electoral register. Why? Because of changes to the way we register to vote.
These changes could bring about the biggest single act of electoral disenfranchisement in our history.
Added to the already eight million people who are not on the register, this new drop off will have a profound impact on our political process and radically affect the boundary review, which is due to start next April.
It seems incredible that 10 million people, 19 per cent of all eligible adults, will not be on the electoral register.
How is this happening? Why is there not a public outcry?
The forthcoming drop-off is due to the government’s decision to bring forward the full introduction of individual electoral registration by an entire year, to 1 December 2015.
Designed to reduce fraud and make the electoral register more accurate, councils have been comparing the names on their existing voter lists with HMRC and DWP records. Anyone who could not be matched was asked to re-register, but this time they also had to provide their national insurance number.
New voters were also required to register individually, thus ending the system whereby one person in a household could register everyone else. This has led to huge drop-off in students and attainers (17-year-olds) registering to vote.
Several million people did register ahead of the general election, and HOPE not hate ran a voter registration campaign at the time, alongside others, but it is the near two million who have not yet re-registered who will drop off in December.
New research by HOPE not hate has found huge discrepancies in the drop-off rate around the country. Eight of the 10 worst -affected local authorities are in London, with Hackney set to lose 23 per cent of voters and Brent 18 per cent. Inner London is badly affected, where a much higher proportion of people live in private rented accommodation, while more affluent suburbs have a much lower drop-off rate.
Further afield, Glasgow is set to lose 13.3 per cent of its electorate, while Birmingham will lose 56,000 people, a 7.7 per cent share.
Councils initially had until December 2016 to register these voters, but in mid-July the government did a volte-face and announced its intention to bring forward the changes by 12 months.
With most of those dropping off being from poorer and non-white communities in urban areas, as opposed to the more settled communities in the suburbs and more affluent towns, it is difficult not to see this as a political act; the boundary review is due to begin in April 2016 and will be based on this new 1 December electoral register.
The situation is set to be compounded by hundreds of thousands of new students failing to register on arrival at college and university this autumn.
So the 17 per cent of Cambridge voters who are already likely to drop off the register in December are likely to be joined by thousands of newly-arrived students who fail to register this autumn. This will have major repercussions for what is a key marginal seat and radically alter the constituency boundary, as outlying rural areas are brought in to make up the 80,000 electorate needed for the new constituency.
HOPE not hate is lobbying members of parliament and peers to annul the government’s decision – which they are entitled to do in a clause inserted into the original Act. Meanwhile, we will also be launching a huge voter registration drive for November to ensure that the maximum number of people are on the register ahead of the 1 December deadline.
We are devising voter registration toolkits for councillors and political parties; guides to working with faith and community groups to ensure that their networks are fully registered; working with electoral registration officers to allow students to register with their student numbers instead of national insurance numbers; and engaging in a large-scale social media campaign to generate awareness.
We will also be inviting civic society organisations, faith groups and trade unions to join us in community voter registration drives.
We cannot just leave it to councils to register people – we need to copy the example of the United States and make voter registration part of our organising process.
We have no time to lose. Millions of people are about to be excluded from the political system. Please join us and let us get to work.
———————————
Nick Lowles is chief executive of HOPE not hate. He tweets @lowles_nick
———————————
Why not make it compulsory to be on the electoral register in order to get any state benefits. It is compulsory if you want to get a mortgage (the first thing they check). The LibDems (remember them, were fully behind Cameron when he passed this legislation).
Why is supplying their national insurance number a problem, anyone would think you wanted to encourage voting fraud. Most people would gladly give up a few seconds to prevent voting fraud, have you no respect for democracy. If students can not be bothered to write down their NI number then what makes you think they would be bothered to vote or do you hope that someone else may do that for them.