The Labour Party is considering adopting automatic voter registration as new policy ahead of the upcoming local elections.
There are an estimated 7 million people in the UK who are not on the electoral register – a figure that would be reduced if automatic registration was introduced.
‘Individual electoral registration has not achieved what we were told it would,’ said Cat Smith MP, Labour’s shadow minister for voter engagement and youth affairs.
‘Millions of people are still missing from the register, with disproportionately low levels of registration amongst mobile, marginalised and vulnerable voter groups.’
Labour is looking at examples of automatic voter registration in Canada, Belgium and a number of other countries. Under this system, 93.8% of all eligible voters are included on the register in Canada.
‘There are many successful examples around the world of automatic voter registration systems, so we are examining the use of Government data to automatically place people on the electoral roll,’ said Ms Smith.
‘We are committed to drastically increasing voter registration to ensure every eligible voter can have their say.’
