- Sir Keir Starmer has already pledged to decrease the voting age within the UK to 16
- Computerized voter registration will embody hundreds of thousands who don’t register to vote
- This may add disproportionate variety of younger individuals who would vote Labour
Labour is plotting so as to add hundreds of thousands extra younger folks to the electoral register if it wins energy, it was reported final evening.
Sir Keir Starmer has already pledged to decrease the voting age to 16 – prompting Tory warnings he’s attempting to ‘rig’ the citizens in Labour’s favour.
Final evening it was reported that Labour can be drawing up secret plans to introduce computerized voter registration in a bid to incorporate hundreds of thousands who don’t at the moment register to vote.
Specialists imagine the transfer may add as much as eight million folks to the electoral roll, together with a disproportionate variety of younger people who find themselves extra prone to vote Labour.
Labour’s manifesto makes solely an indirect reference to plans to ‘enhance voter registration’.
Labour is plotting so as to add hundreds of thousands extra younger folks to the electoral register if it wins energy
Labour is drawing up secret plans to introduce computerized voter registration in a bid to incorporate hundreds of thousands who don’t at the moment register to vote.
However electoral officers informed the Guardian the reference was a dedication to work in the direction of computerized registration throughout the UK.
A Labour supply final evening insisted the get together had not dedicated to the plan and had solely agreed to take a look at methods to enhance registration.
However a Tory spokesman final evening warned the transfer may ‘open the door to electoral fraud’.
‘Devoid of any actual insurance policies, that is simply one other Labour plot to fiddle with the citizens like votes at 16,’ the spokesman mentioned.
‘Computerized registration would imply extra inaccurate entries and open the door to electoral fraud.’
Presently, adults within the UK must register if they’re to vote.
Beneath computerized registration, the electoral roll is compiled from different data, for instance these linked to council tax, HMRC data or passport information, with folks added by default.
Though registration is straightforward, an estimated 7 to 8million individuals are lacking from or wrongly recorded on present registers, a lot of them younger, in addition to a disproportionate quantity who’re poorer or who stay in privately rented properties.
Electoral Fee information exhibits that whereas 96 per cent of individuals aged 65 or over are registered to vote, this falls to 60 per cent for these aged 18 and 19, and 67 per cent for folks aged 20 to 24. Round 95 per cent of house owners are registered in contrast with 65 per cent of personal renters.
The Labour administration in Wales has already introduced plans to trial the change. When the plan was proposed, the Welsh Conservatives opposed it, saying computerized registration may trigger ‘confusion’.
The Electoral Reform Society, which campaigns to make voting simpler, mentioned it will welcome the plan.
Dr Jess Garland, its head of analysis and coverage, referred to as it ‘a win-win for voters as it will take yet one more factor off their to-do checklist, whereas on the identical time strengthening our democracy by serving to to enfranchise hundreds of thousands of lacking voters’.
