Electoral registration in the United Kingdom

Last updated September 17, 2023

Electors must be on the electoral register in order to vote in elections and referendums in the UK. Electoral registration officers within local authorities have a duty to compile and maintain accurate electoral registers.

Registration was introduced for all constituencies as a result of the Reform Act 1832, which took effect for the election of the same year. Since 1832, only those registered to vote can do so, and the government invariably runs nonpartisan get out the vote campaigns for each election to expand the franchise as much as possible.

Current procedure

To register to vote a person must be 16 years old or over (but they cannot vote in some elections until they are 18) and resident (usually live) in the UK. In addition, a person must be a British, Irish or European Union citizen, or a Commonwealth citizen who has leave to remain in the UK or who does not require such leave, or a citizen of another country living in Scotland or Wales who has permission to enter or stay in the UK, or who does not need permission.^[1]

A person can register at any time of the year. To register, electors should have a fixed address. If an elector wishes to register to vote, but has no fixed address, they may be able to register to vote by completing a declaration of local connection form. This would allow them to register at a place where they are likely to spend a substantial amount of their time.

Regulation 23 of the Representation of the People Regulations 2001 states that the electoral registration officer has the power to require information needed for the purpose of maintaining the electoral register. Any person who fails to give information is liable on summary conviction to a fine.

A person can register anonymously if their safety (or the safety of someone in their household) would be at risk if their name and address appeared on the electoral register. Documentary evidence of a court order or an attestation from an authorised person is required.^[2]

Individual Electoral Registration

'Individual Electoral Registration' (IER) was introduced by the UK government through the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 with the first IER applications being made in England and Wales from 10 June 2014 and in Scotland from 19 September 2014 (the delay in Scotland was due to the Scottish Independence Referendum).^[3]

Previously, the 'head of household' was responsible for registering everyone who lived at the address, but now every individual is responsible for their own voter registration. The new system also means that people are now able to register online. Anyone newly registering under the new system will need to register themselves individually by filling out a paper or online form.^[2]

In order to register under IER electors are required to provide their date of birth and evidence of their identity, most often a national insurance number.^[4]

History

Before 1832

Before 1832, the only form of voter registration in the United Kingdom was in the Scottish counties. This consisted of a meeting of potential electors called to determine who was eligible to vote. As the electorate for these seats was extremely small—in 1788, it ranged between 16 electors for Clackmannanshire and 187 for Fife—meetings were an important part of the political process; often, elections were determined by registering or disqualifying electors. In the rest of Britain and Ireland, people who claimed to be qualified voters simply presented themselves at the hustings to vote. If a candidate who lost thought his defeat was due to ineligible voters, he could ask for a scrutiny, which would turn out to be an expensive and lengthy process in large constituencies.

In England land tax lists were sometimes used as substitutes for a register. However, not all qualified voters paid land tax, and eligibility was at the discretion of the returning officer as to who was permitted to vote. The high sheriff of the county, or the mayor of a borough, would often abuse their authority as ex officio returning officers for partisan purposes. A losing candidate could petition the House of Commons if he suspected that the returning officer had abused their power.

In 1788, Parliament attempted to introduce voter registration. The scheme failed—registering only one hundred voters in Lancashire—and was abandoned after a year. Parliament attempted again in 1832, when Sir James Graham introduced legislation that would shift the focus of eligibility to the registration process.

Registration process from 1832

In 1832 the overseers of the poor in each parish, who at that time compiled information relevant to electoral qualifications in order to collect local taxes, were given the additional task of compiling the electoral register. The new Act of Parliament required that on 20 June in each year in the counties, the overseers publish a notice calling on prospective voters to make a claim and prove their eligibility to vote. Once an elector had done so, he would be re-listed every time unless his circumstances or eligibility changed. In July, the overseers in the counties would compile a draft register for elections to be held in the coming year. If any elector's eligibility was challenged, the objection was recorded and the elector was given notice to appeal. The list of objections was published during the first two weeks of September.

In the boroughs, the rate-book—which the overseers already compiled—provided a natural basis for the electoral register. An elector who had paid his rates up to the start of the registration period did not need to make a claim, unless there had been a change of address or qualification. By 20 July the assessors and collectors of taxes had to report to the overseers the names of those who were in arrears with payment of their rates. The overseers then compiled a draft electoral register of all those they considered as being qualified to vote. Separate lists of people qualified to vote by virtue of their status as freemen of the borough were prepared by the Town Clerk. The combined lists of all prospective voters were published by the last day of July. Anyone else who claimed to be qualified to vote or who objected was required to give notice to the overseers.

From this point onwards the process for finalising the electoral register was the same for all areas. Barristers (who became known, collectively, as revising barristers) were appointed by senior judges to hold courts which sat from mid-September to the end of October, to revise the lists of voters.^[5] These barristers reviewed statements from the officials who had drawn up the lists, from claimants, and from objectors in order to produce the final list of qualified electors. The procedure involved strict compliance with the law and even minor clerical errors could invalidate a claim. A well-qualified person could be put to the time and trouble of defending his vote, even against a worthless objection, because if he did not appear his claim was automatically rejected. This system was difficult and expensive to operate. It encouraged the development of party organisation, as legally qualified agents were needed to defend the claims of party supporters and challenge the eligibility of those supporting opponents. The office of revising barrister was abolished in 1918^[6] when the duties were entrusted to the electoral registration officer.

The dates on which electoral registers came into force were changed from time to time and sometimes varied across different parts of the country: in England and Wales, registers came into force on 1 November between 1832 and 1842, and 1 January between 1844 and 1915. The 1832 system broke down during the First World War: registers were not revised after 1915, and with many voters serving in the armed forces or relocating in order to take up war work, the registers became very outdated.

The passage of the Representation of the People Act 1918, which introduced suffrage for men aged 21 and enfranchised some women from the age of 30, gave the opportunity for revising the process of electoral registration. Responsibility for preparing electoral registers was taken away from the overseers of the poor and given to local authorities. Suffrage was also expanded—or restricted—by following Representation Acts:

Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928, expanding the suffrage to all adults over 21
Representation of the People Act 1969, expanding the suffrage to all adults over 18
Representation of the People Act 1983, restricting the right to vote from prisoners
Representation of the People Act 1985 and 1989, allowing expatriates to vote in the last constituency they lived in for a period of 5 (1985), 20 (1989), and, currently, 15 years (PPERA [2000]) after leaving.
Representation of the People Act 2000, removing restrictions on postal voting and allowing psychiatric patients to use hospitals as registration addresses.

Reform

Organisations such as the Electoral Reform Society support moving towards automatic voter registration.^[7]

Related Research Articles

The Representation of the People Act 1832 was an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom that introduced major changes to the electoral system of England and Wales. It abolished tiny districts, gave representation to cities, gave the vote to small landowners, tenant farmers, shopkeepers, householders who paid a yearly rental of £10 or more, and some lodgers. Only qualifying men were able to vote; the Act introduced the first explicit statutory bar to women voting by defining a voter as a male person.

Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise is the right to vote in public, political elections and referendums. In some languages, and occasionally in English, the right to vote is called active suffrage, as distinct from passive suffrage, which is the right to stand for election. The combination of active and passive suffrage is sometimes called full suffrage.

Disfranchisement, also called disenfranchisement, or voter disqualification is the restriction of suffrage of a person or group of people, or a practice that has the effect of preventing a person exercising the right to vote. Disfranchisement can also refer to the revocation of power or control of a particular individual, community or being to the natural amenity they have; that is to deprive of a franchise, of a legal right, of some privilege or inherent immunity. Disfranchisement may be accomplished explicitly by law or implicitly through requirements applied in a discriminatory fashion, through intimidation, or by placing unreasonable requirements on voters for registration or voting. High barriers to entry to the political competition can disenfranchise political movements.

In the United Kingdom under the premiership of William Gladstone, the Representation of the People Act 1884 and the Redistribution Act of the following year were laws which further extended the suffrage in the UK after the Derby government's Reform Act 1867. Taken together, these measures extended the same voting qualifications as existed in the towns to the countryside, more than doubling the electorate in the counties, and essentially established the modern one member constituency as the normal pattern for parliamentary representation.

In electoral systems, voter registration is the requirement that a person otherwise eligible to vote must register on an electoral roll, which is usually a prerequisite for being entitled or permitted to vote.

"General Electors" is the term formerly used in Fiji to identify citizens of voting age who belonged, in most cases, to ethnic minorities. The 1997 Constitution defined General Electors as all Fiji citizens who were not registered as being of Fijian, Indian, or Rotuman descent. Also included were citizens who did qualify to be registered in the above categories, but who chose not to be. Persons of biracial or multiracial ancestry could opt to enroll either as General Electors, or as descendants of any of the other three groups to which they had an ancestral claim. General Electors were thus a diverse electorate, whose members included Europeans, Chinese, Banaban Islanders, and many smaller groups. They were allocated 3 seats in the House of Representatives, the lower and more influential house of the Fijian Parliament.

An electoral roll is a compilation that lists persons who are entitled to vote for particular elections in a particular jurisdiction. The list is usually broken down by electoral districts, and is primarily prepared to assist election officials at polling places. Most jurisdictions maintain permanent electoral rolls, which are updated continuously or periodically, while some jurisdictions compile new electoral rolls before each election. Electoral rolls are the result of a process of voter registration. In most jurisdictions, voter registration is a prerequisite for voting at an election. Some jurisdictions do not require voter registration, and do not use electoral rolls, such as the state of North Dakota in the United States. In those jurisdictions a voter must provide identification and proof of entitlement to vote before being permitted to vote.

The Representation of the People Act 1948 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that altered the law relating to parliamentary and local elections. It is noteworthy for abolishing plural voting for parliamentary elections, including by the abolition of the twelve separate university constituencies; and for again increasing the number of members overall, in this case to 613.

Communal constituencies were the most durable feature of the Fijian electoral system. In communal constituencies, electors enrolled as ethnic Fijians, Indo-Fijians, Rotuman Islanders, or General electors vote for a candidate of their own respective ethnic groups, in constituencies that have been reserved by ethnicity. Other methods of choosing parliamentarians came and went, but this feature was a constant until their final abolition in the 2013 Constitution.

Forty-shilling freeholders were those who had the parliamentary franchise to vote by virtue of possessing freehold property, or lands held directly of the king, of an annual rent of at least forty shillings, clear of all charges.

The total registered electorate in the United Kingdom grew from 5.7 million in 1885 to over 21 million in 1918. Much of the growth was result of the Representation of the People Act 1918, which expanded franchise by abolishing property qualifications for men and introduced female suffrage for some women over the age of 30.

A faggot voter or faggot was a person who qualified to vote in an election with a restricted suffrage only by the exploitation of loopholes in the regulations. Typically, faggot voters satisfied a property qualification by holding the title to a subdivision of a large property with a single beneficial owner. Faggot voting was a common electoral abuse in the United Kingdom until the electoral reforms of the late 19th century.

There are five types of elections in the United Kingdom: elections to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, elections to devolved parliaments and assemblies, local elections, mayoral elections, and Police and Crime Commissioner elections. Within each of those categories, there may also be by-elections. Elections are held on Election Day, which is conventionally a Thursday, and under the provisions of the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022 the timing of general elections can be held at the discretion of the prime minister during any five-year period. All other types of elections are held after fixed periods, though early elections to the devolved assemblies and parliaments can occur in certain situations. The five electoral systems used are: the single member plurality system (first-past-the-post), the multi-member plurality, the single transferable vote, the additional member system, and the supplementary vote.

The National Register of Electors is a continuously updated permanent database of eligible electors for federal elections in Canada maintained by Elections Canada. It was established in December 1996 when Bill C-63 was granted royal assent and the preliminary National Register of Electors was populated with data in April 1997 during the final Canada-wide enumeration. It replaced a system which required door-to-door enumeration of eligible electors for each electoral event. The database contains basic information about electors: name, address, sex, and date of birth. An elector may register or update their personal information between elections, or may request to be excluded from it per the Canada Elections Act.

An anonymous elector is generally a registered voter whose safety would be at risk if their details were available on a public electoral register.

The Electoral Registration Act 2005 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It expired on 24 February 2006.

The Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which amended electoral law in the United Kingdom. It introduced Individual Electoral Registration (IER).

The Electoral Fraud Act 2002 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which reformed the electoral system in Northern Ireland. The act amended the Representation of the People Act 1983 by strengthening the requirements in the electoral registration process and requiring photographic identification at polling stations.

Absentee voting in the United Kingdom is allowed by proxy or post for any elector.

In Australia, voter registration is called enrolment. Enrolment is a prerequisite for voting at federal elections, by-elections and referendums, as well as all state and local government elections; and it is generally compulsory for enrolled persons to vote unless otherwise exempted or excused. Enrolment is compulsory for Australian citizens over 18 years of age who have lived at their current address for at least one month. Enrolment is not compulsory for persons with no fixed address who are not already enrolled. Residents in Australia who had been enrolled as British subjects on 25 January 1984, though not Australian citizens, continue to be enrolled, and cannot opt out of enrolment. For local government elections, an elector generally does not require to be an Australian citizen. Once enrolled, a person cannot opt out of enrolment. Enrolment is optional for 16- or 17-year-olds, but they cannot vote until they turn 18, and persons who have applied for Australian citizenship may also apply for provisional enrolment which takes effect on the granting of citizenship.

References

↑ "Register to vote". GOV.UK. Retrieved 6 March 2023.
1 2 "Guidance for Electoral Registration Officers : Part 2 – The registration framework" (PDF). Electoralcommission.org.uk. Retrieved 26 April 2017.
↑ "Guidance for Electoral Registration Officers : Part 3 - 2016 canvass" (PDF). Electoralcommission.org.uk. Retrieved 26 April 2017.
↑ "Register to vote". GOV.UK. Retrieved 21 April 2017.
↑ 2 & 3 Will. IV, c. 45: An Act to amend the Representation of the People in England and Wales (7 June 1832), s. 49 et seq. In: The Statutes of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland ..., vol 72, p 154. His Majesty's Statute and Law Printers, 1832. 1832. Retrieved 30 March 2015.
↑ Fraser, Sir Hugh. "The Representation of the People Act, 1918 with explanatory notes". Internet Archive. Retrieved 1 April 2015.
↑ "Voter Registration". Electoral Reform Society. Retrieved 1 March 2021.