[Labour] spokesperson said: “What I won’t sanction is … lots of voters dropping off the register, deprived of their vote, and stopped from taking part in elections because of bureaucracy and badly-implemented government policies. This would be a disaster for our democracy.
“I’m alarmed at the government’s complacency. They speeded up the measured move to individual electoral registration that Labour put in place, and have stripped out the safeguards that were designed to prevent eligible voters dropping off the register.”
He said those potentially disenfranchised are more likely to be students, those in private rental accommodation and members of the black and minority ethnic (BAME) community. He said: “Many of those are already on the margins of society, and stripping them of their votes would make this worse. That’s why I’m clear that if there’s a dramatic reduction in the numbers of those on the electoral register because of the move to individual electoral registration, I’m prepared to pull the plug”.
Recent estimates from the Electoral Commission suggest there are 6 million eligible voters currently not on the electoral register -2.5million more than previous estimates. The Electoral Reform Society has warned that this number could sharply increase with the introduction of individual electoral registration, saying the proposals, if implemented badly, could have a “devastating impact on British democracy by alienating millions of voters right before the 2015 general election …”
East Devon Watch 
Not forgetting our European friends who live and work here. They are entitled to be on the Register and to vote in a number of the elections in the UK. We have five hotel workers living next door and I am pretty certain that they have never been canvassed to go on the electoral roll. They all work shift work so are only at home at odd times. They are in rented accommodation and only use mobile phones. Shouldn’t the canvassers be going round the hotels during the working day to pick up people such as these?
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I forgot to add that in previous times, as far as I know, the hotel owners used to have responsibility for putting their seasonal workers on the Electoral roll.
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