“Reforms to the electoral registration process under this and the previous coalition government have led to changes which experts and campaigners alike have described as negative for democracy.
We stand at a critical crossroads in our democracy. The number of people that are on the electoral register is in long-term decline. It was estimated that up to 7.5 million people were not registered in 2014. During the transition to individual electoral registration (IER) another 1.4 million names were removed. Dramatically, the number of attainers, our next generation of voters, fell by 40%.
In a draft report, co-authored with Bite The Ballot, and presented to the All-Party Parliamentary Party on Democratic Participation for discussion today, new information is unveiled about the nature of the problem. Findings from a new UEA survey of electoral administrators, as detailed in the report, shows that two-thirds of electoral administrators agreed that citizens had complained to them about the registration process being bureaucratic. Roughly half of electoral officials thought that the completeness of the register had declined.”
East Devon Watch 