Question: the number of electors was stable in 2011, 2012 and 2013 at around 104,000 then it plummeted this year by 6,000. EDDC was supposed to arrange to physically visit properties which had not registered but someone made the decision not to do so. Who? Why? Where is this decision documented?
EDDC makes light of the fact that it is named by the Electoral Commission as in the bottom 6% of councils for registration. Were councillors aware of this before the May 2015 European elections? If not, why not? If so, why was there no call for this to be remedied before that election?
East Devon Watch 
The Express and Echo article is worth reading. Looks like the East Devon Alliance scoop on this has flushed the local MP out to comment on something he ought to have told us before. Bottom line, some of our electorate disappeared for the Euro elections, and now there is nine months for Mark Williams, the Returning Officer, to make sure this cannot happen at the General Election. Both gentleman’s actions will be watched with interest.
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I seem to be in a time warp – weren’t the European Elections in May 2014, not May 2015 as in the main entry here? Also, I can’t really follow why the move to Individual Elector Registration, which only came in on 10 June 2014, should have affected who was eligible to vote in the May 2014 European elections or total the number on the Electoral Roll for 2014. This Roll was surely determined in Autumn of 2013?
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Voting in the May 2014 European election was done from an electoral roll published in February 2014 from figures which should have been finalised in December 2013. It should have been obvious in December 2013 that something was badly wrong. At that time, every missing household should have been physically visited – no such visits took place. There have been some telephone calls made but we do not know to whom, when or how many voters that resulted in recovering from the missing 6,000.
Only 22 councils got themselves into this mess, 5 self-reported their failure, 17 did not – EDDC was amongst those 17.
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Thanks TFE for your reply
So presumably the mention (above) of European elections in May 2015 was a typo.
But your explanation, which is what I assumed was how things happen, doesn’t answer my concern about IER.
In the Express and Echo story referred to in the earlier post about this, Hugo Swire is quoted as explaining the drop in 2014 electoral roll thus:
“As a result of the transition from household registration to individual registration some eligible voters failed to return their forms.”
so he is obviously living 12 months ahead of the rest of us.
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Yes, but it doesn’t explain why 94% of other councils don’t have our problem of missing thousands. They have managed to deal with this transition – where all councils were told well in advance of the transition what they were expected to do – they did as required, our council didn’t and we have not had an explanation of why.
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The someone should write to the council and ask then specifically to explain their failure.
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