h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Never too worn out to bang on about elections I voted when at uni in the late 80s and thinking about it, yes it would be the law to register students in halls ... they would all count as one household, and one person has to complete the form with the names of all electors living in that household, and sign to say it's correct. At the moment, individual electors aren't required to sign for themselves at the time of the annual canvass, only if they want to be added to the register during the year - a loophole which really ought to be closed; I mean, if people don't even know that they're registered to vote, that's kind of asking for trouble. And there would be nothing surprising about 60 postal votes going to one address, if that address was a hall of residence.

I should go to bed ... long day ... started at 5.45am!

Mol

I see that there are quite a lot of electors in Birmingham who have been removed from the electoral register - including a BBC reporter. He has been told that he never returned his canvassing card (he says he never got one) so he was removed. He says he voted in the council elections, so surely he should have been retained for at least a year - in line with recommendations. Apparently he's not the only one - they churned out 3 others on the news.

Removing a BBC reporter was probably a bad move ... I can well believe that Birmingham doesn't carry over non-responding electors though, as their electorate must be fairly mobile (compared with areas like my own, which is mostly rural) - the register would be artificially inflated if they carried over all non-responders.

Electors *always* say they didn't get their annual canvass form. But an authority will generally follow this up with a reminder, and some, perhaps most, authorities, follow this with a second reminder after the new register has been published on 1 December. That's three bits of post that have gone astray - six if the authority does carry over non-responding households to a second year. That's a matter for complaint with Royal Mail, not the council - which will probably be able to supply issue dates for each form/letter.

The fact that we are *still* receiving canvass forms (sometimes from previous years) at least six months after the original issue does suggest that people aren't as observant or organised as they think they are. They put important documents into a heap of stuff and never get round to dealing with it. It is not a great deal to expect of most people that they sign a form and return it in the envelope provided and my sympathy for people in this situation is extremely limited; I save it for those who missed out on the canvass (by moving house in the autumn) or who have genuine problems with completing forms or whose property has disappeared (or never been included) on the electoral register (and who would therefore never have been contacted about being included on it). From the sounds of it, this BBC reporter would not fall into any of these categories. And having voted previously does not bring any automatic right to vote in the future, funnily enough the voter lists from an election are not fed back into the system, and we have no way of knowing who has voted and who has not when we are about to delete non-responders. And even if we *did*, the system has to be applied scrupulously fairly, and not in a judgemental, "He's worthy - he's not" kind of way. It does say on the form that if you don't respond, you will lose your right to vote.

We are talking about asking people to *write their name* - not design a working space-rocket. It's really not very difficult and if people are that fussed about their democratic rights they should be a bit more pro-active about fulfilling their democratic responsibilities.

Mol - fed up of not being rude to incompetent electors