If you live in the country that you're a citizen of, is the onus on you to actively register with some election authority, failing which you would be unable to vote in elections or otherwise participate in democracy?
(Boosts for reach OK)
Also, question for the UK: do I read things correctly that although you do have to register in order to vote, the government will tell you to do so, and if you don't comply you'll get fined? Or do they never actually tell anyone to register?
People are not required to vote, but are required to register.
In practice the council send a letter to each property asking people to confirm their details to be added to the register. In the past some councils would have people going door to door to ensure the register was upto date.
It's also worth noting the local council collect and count votes, for both local and national polls.
I've never heard of someone being fined.
@intrbiz Interesting. Are there any stats on compliance? In other words, do you happen to know
(a) what percentage of people who could vote, and aren't already registered, do and don't get a reminder;
(b) what percentage of people who get one, do and don't actually register?
No public stats that I know of, some might be possible via FOI requests.
In people are reminded yearly to keep it upto date. It's kind of linked a bit with council tax, so in general it's more the 'head of the household' having to notify of other residents whom are eligible.
It's more akin to having to fill in a census in my view.
I suspect it's often students and multiple occupancy rentals that mostly fall through the cracks.
In many ways our lack of govt. id makes this harder.
@intrbiz @xahteiwi I've just gone down something of a rabbit hole.
There are around 47 million registered voters. I found a House of Commons report that says up to 8 million people may be missing from the register. These are mostly:
- Young people (who haven't registered yet)
- Renters (who may move frequently, making address-based registration challenging)
- Ethnic minorities (who the government hates and therefore they are reluctant to engage)
- Poorer people (too busy surviving)
@JetlagJen @intrbiz ... where if you're being cynical, "missing" could also be read as "conveniently excluded"?
I do think it's unfair to say 'conveniently excluded'. That would imply a lack of effort, which is not the case.
Both local and national govt, do put effort into reminding people, reaching people and making it easy.
Often political parties, schools and other activists groups also remind people.
Short of compulsory national id cards, I don't see there is much more which could be done to get people on the electoral roll.
@intrbiz @xahteiwi @JetlagJen How does that work for homeless people?
@drgroftehauge @intrbiz @xahteiwi the short answer is "not very well."
There's a process to nominate a non-home address for voter registration. So if you're sofa surfing, you can register a friend's address and vote as though you were a resident of their house.
This is also a challenge for the various traveller communities. A friend had real trouble a while ago because she lived on a houseboat.
@JetlagJen @intrbiz @xahteiwi After posting I realised I didn't know how you would vote in my country if you were homeless!
But apparently it's not so bad (besides the whole being homeless). If you don't have a registered mailing address you can get the slip of paper at Borgerservice (Citizen Service) or you can vote with ID.
If you are in hospital or prison you do mail-in voting.
@intrbiz @JetlagJen I'm talking about exclusion (being a consequence of the system) that happens to be convenient to one side of the political spectrum. If 8 million people are unduly off the voting register — which numbers "only" about 50 million, so we're talking a massive fraction — and those 8 million demographically skew towards the political left (because younger, less affluent, perhaps of foreign background), wouldn't "conservatives" be interested in maintaining that situation?
How sure are you that the Austrian residence register doesn't have similarly biased inaccuracies?
I'm not saying the UK system is good. I would personally support a national ID. But I think there is a degree of complacency in assuming that compulsory registration leads to accurate and unbiased data.
@intrbiz @xahteiwi here are a few suggestions, off the top of my head:
- when people register for council tax (or exemption) in a new property, have a couple of tickboxes for "please update my electoral record" and "please update my whole household's electoral records"
- when people are sent their NI card, also send a voter registration form
- make it clearer what the edited register is and how it works
- make it easier to get the forms in different formats and languages