Labour to bring in automatic voter registration under plans to boost franchise

12 comments

1. Get rid of the pain in the ass voter ID bollocks as well please.

2. In stark contrast to the conservatives who are trying to stop people from voting.

   In the past week or so Labour have been saying more and more to make me optimistic of them being in power.

3. It’s not exactly difficult to register to vote. If someone isn’t on the electoral roll, it’s likely to be down to apathy rather than anything else. I wouldn’t be surprised if this measure doesn’t increase the number of people who actually vote in any meaningful way.

4. Hmmm this might affect the way seats are distributed. Both parties play games around this issue, not quite gerrymandering but still gaming for advantage.

   But like the voter id thing, this will not change voting habits much.

   >Electoral Commission data [shows that](https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/who-is-registered) while 96% of people aged 65 or over are registered to vote, this falls to 60% for those aged 18 and 19, and 67% for people aged 20 to 24. Similarly, 95% of homeowners are registered against 65% of private renters.

   “Why do parties pander to older voters” they cry.

5. Will it make any difference? If you can’t even be bothered to register are you really going to bother voting?

6. This has potential issues with the availability of the data from the electoral roll.

   There’s an awful lot of people not on it specifically to avoid having a scumbag ex tracking them down.

7. Just give us an app already, if I can do my taxes, everything for my car, passport etc.. using government gateway why can’t I vote? If I can use a system to get a form of ID I can vote with that same system should be considered safe enough to vote with. It’s not even novel

   https://medium.com/edge-elections/which-countries-use-online-voting-3f7300ce2f0

8. I think this is huge. Tories are working on disenfranchising people, this goes the opposite way.

   Lots of people fall at the first hurdle at anything. People not having to register will boost turnouts no doubt.

9. and how are they going to boost the franchise when people can clearly see, there’s little to no point until they change the voting system itself.

10. Drop ID requirement, make voting day a national holiday and make voting mandatory.

11. Everyone needs to be automatically registered to vote, everyone is legally required to vote and the nation gets a bank holiday TO vote.

    Make people get involved.

12. Millions of people will continue to be disenfranchised by FPTP until it is excised from our lives so what is the point of automatically registering people when it’s of so little consequence in so many seats?

    Seems like some flimsy red meat for the voter reform folk to shut up to me.