Most people should know that the old system of household voter registration is being replaced by a new system of individual voter registration. To this end Election Services have been working extremely hard to persuade voters to register or to fill in those yellow forms. The new register is being published on December 1st and then we will see how successful they have been. This has been a contentious issue.
While Conservatives have argued that there have been many people on the register who should not be there, Labour and other parties have argued that people who struggle to feed themselves, pay the heating bills, or are in otherwise difficult circumstances, are unlikely to put voter registration at the top of their agenda. The government has gone ahead with the new scheme and many people may find that they have been dropped from the register that is published on December 1st. If and when they discover this, they will of course be able to register under the new system before the next elections in Weymouth and Portland in May. Phone 01305 838299. It may fall through to customer services, who say they can check whether someone is registered. Alternatively voters can register again online (they will need their national insurance number) at https://www.dorsetforyou.com/register-to-vote. If you are already registered you will get an email from Election Services which is generated automatically.
However, there is another consequence of the new register. The government has ignored the advice of the Electoral Commission who believed they were acting much too fast, and decreed that there will be a boundary review based not as previously on population figures but on the numbers of voters on the December register. The number of MPs is to be reduced from 650 to 600 and the inevitable result will be that the poor and disadvantaged will be worse represented and the comfortably off better represented. I had understood that the boundary review would be based on the state of the register in April next year, giving people time to get registered. It was a complete surprise to me and it seems the local Labour Party. It was only 38 degrees that alerted me to the fact that I could be wrong. It took me a number of phone calls to find out the truth. The Electoral Commission did not know or would not answer the question. When I phoned the Boundary Commission the person who answered did not know, and had to ask a colleague to phone back. The horrid truth was later confirmed by Electoral Services, who I think were in meetings when I phoned. It’s not their fault! A government that acts so precipitately and fails to warn, can have no claim to respect democracy.
David Smith, West and South Dorset Green Party
