7 thoughts on “Express and Echo takes up our story of the missing 6,000 voters”
I have been raising concerns for the last seven years with Electoral Registration & Environmental Health. Last year, during a by-election in Exmouth, we found twenty three properties in a short stretch of road in Exmouth which contained flats which did not appear on the electoral register. It was front page news in the Exmouth Journal.
So far, all the discussion has been about Doorstep Canvassing, performance standard no. 3 of the Electoral Commission.
But performance standard no. 2 is about maintaining a comprehensive and accurate database of properties. After all you cannot doorstep canvas a property who hasn’t returned a registration form if your database of properties is incomplete and you can’t therefore identify that that property has not sent in a registration form. Indeed, presumably properties not on the database don’t get a registration form sent to them!!!
I would certainly be interested to know more about failures on performance standard no. 2.
I’m confused. Just after the revelations in (I think) July I am sure I read somewhere that Mr Williams said that 3,000 people had already been added yet the figure quoted some 3 months later is lower. Also, surely if we had 104,000 people in 2013 and we now have Cranbrook and all the other big developments here surely the real figure now should be more than 105,000 plus.
I see that Williams is listed as speaking about “rural voter registration” but Cranbrook is hardly rural and if REALLY rural areas such as Cumbria have managed to get things right, surely East Devon can – we are hardly the Sahara desert with Bedouins and camels to be tracked down.
If you don’t do what you are supposed to do for (at least) three years and if, as Mrs Wragg says above, she has been drawing the council’s attention to the problem, what possible excuse can he give?
If this were the opposite way round – introducing more of your own type of voter as Shirley Porter did in Westminster – it would be called gerrymandering.
Perhaps some people, seeing that our council concretes over everything and refuses to put it’s own house with no inquiry into disgraced councillors and dubious business organisations in order just think it’s a waste of a vote.
There is a more sinister interpretation: (a) fewer voters means fewer council tax evaders to chase and fewer debtors to reveal and (b) money saved on canvassing. Thus allowing with (a) not having to increase council tax and (b) more money for Skypark!
Maths is clearly not Mr W’s strong suit: I recall he “counted” under 1,000 at the SOS march in November 2012, when the Daily Telegraph and an ex-Coldstream guardsman both made it nearly 4,000 — i.e. more “economy with the truth” from our CEO
East Devon Watch 
I have been raising concerns for the last seven years with Electoral Registration & Environmental Health. Last year, during a by-election in Exmouth, we found twenty three properties in a short stretch of road in Exmouth which contained flats which did not appear on the electoral register. It was front page news in the Exmouth Journal.
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I imagine they appeared on the Council Tax registers Eileen. Shouldn’t have been too difficult to spot the disparity if the will was there.
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So far, all the discussion has been about Doorstep Canvassing, performance standard no. 3 of the Electoral Commission.
But performance standard no. 2 is about maintaining a comprehensive and accurate database of properties. After all you cannot doorstep canvas a property who hasn’t returned a registration form if your database of properties is incomplete and you can’t therefore identify that that property has not sent in a registration form. Indeed, presumably properties not on the database don’t get a registration form sent to them!!!
I would certainly be interested to know more about failures on performance standard no. 2.
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Will the Leader report on Mr William’s London day out at Full Council a week tonight? If not, we will.
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I’m confused. Just after the revelations in (I think) July I am sure I read somewhere that Mr Williams said that 3,000 people had already been added yet the figure quoted some 3 months later is lower. Also, surely if we had 104,000 people in 2013 and we now have Cranbrook and all the other big developments here surely the real figure now should be more than 105,000 plus.
I see that Williams is listed as speaking about “rural voter registration” but Cranbrook is hardly rural and if REALLY rural areas such as Cumbria have managed to get things right, surely East Devon can – we are hardly the Sahara desert with Bedouins and camels to be tracked down.
If you don’t do what you are supposed to do for (at least) three years and if, as Mrs Wragg says above, she has been drawing the council’s attention to the problem, what possible excuse can he give?
If this were the opposite way round – introducing more of your own type of voter as Shirley Porter did in Westminster – it would be called gerrymandering.
LikeLike
Perhaps some people, seeing that our council concretes over everything and refuses to put it’s own house with no inquiry into disgraced councillors and dubious business organisations in order just think it’s a waste of a vote.
There is a more sinister interpretation: (a) fewer voters means fewer council tax evaders to chase and fewer debtors to reveal and (b) money saved on canvassing. Thus allowing with (a) not having to increase council tax and (b) more money for Skypark!
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Maths is clearly not Mr W’s strong suit: I recall he “counted” under 1,000 at the SOS march in November 2012, when the Daily Telegraph and an ex-Coldstream guardsman both made it nearly 4,000 — i.e. more “economy with the truth” from our CEO
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