Tony Burke warns of the coalition’s attempts to reduce the electoral roll by three million left wing voters under the guise of allowing people to be left alone.
Tony Burke is the Assistant General Secretary of Unite
Last week the Guardian reported that Nick Clegg, deputy prime minister, was considering making a u-turn on UK voter registration. The proposal being made is that the coalition would make it easier for people ‘not to register to vote’.
PICA government white paper proposed that as part of a move from household to individual voter registration from 2014, voters would no longer be required to co-operate with the electoral registration officer whose duty it is to compile the annual register. In the UK at present, voters maybe subjected to fines or warning letters for not registering.
The proposal could disenfranchise 3 million mainly working-class people, students and people from ethnic minorities who are not registered. The Electoral Commission, supported by psephologists, the Labour opposition and electoral registration officers has warned as many as a third of voters falling off the register.
Clegg now says he was “minded to change these provisions when we bring forward the final proposal”.
The question is why was the proposal brought forward in the first place? Constitutional affairs minister, Mark Harper, waffled that the proposal was made to help people who just wanted to be “left alone”, and also to allow the electoral registration officer to get on with his job!
The reality is that this is a clear piece of gerrymandering by keeping people off the electoral role creating a right wing hegemony.
Make no mistake, the Conservatives are taking a leaf out of the US right-wing’s playbook. Whilst not in the same league – as yet anyway – it is worth taking a look at what is currently happening in the USA where right-wing state legislators and governors are setting out to reduce the franchise, by eliminating millions of potential Democrat voters. We would be well advised to take note.
In the USA right-wing state governments have enacted so many new laws it is difficult to keep a full analysis.
However a study by the Brennan Centre For Justice (based at the New York School of Law) shows that of the 19 laws and two executive actions passed in 14 US states, the new laws could make it significantly harder for more than five million eligible voters to cast their votes in the 2012 US presidential election. The states that have already changed voting rights will provide 171 electoral votes in 2012 – 63 percent of the 270, which are needed to win the US presidency.
These changes affect predominantly retired people, the young, ethnic minorities, low-income families and those with disabilities.
States making the changes say that they have done so to “prevent fraud”, “to ease administrative burdens” and “to save money”.
Overall, state legislators passed the following measures:
At least 34 US states introduced legislation that would require voters to show state issued photo identification in order to vote. Photo ID bills came into law in Alabama, Kansas, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin quadrupling the 2011 figure. Currently 11% of American citizens do not possess a government issued photo ID – that’s over 21 million people.
At least twelve states including Alabama, Tennessee and Kansas introduced legislation requiring proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate, to register or vote. Only two states had previously passed proof of citizenship laws.
Thirteen states introduced bills to end the popular “Election Day” and “same-day” voter registration, and to limit voter registration mobilisation efforts and reduce other registration drives. These included Maine who passed a law eliminating Election Day registration, Ohio ended its weeklong period of same day voter registration, Florida and Texas passed laws restricting voter registration drives and Florida and Wisconsin passed laws making it more difficult for people who move to stay registered and vote.
Nine states have introduced bills to reduce early voting periods, and four tried to reduce absentee voting opportunities. Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia succeeded in enacting bills reducing early voting whilst two states – Florida and Iowa – reversed laws which made it easier for citizens with past convictions to restore their voting rights, affecting hundreds of thousands of voters.
Even the non-partisan and highly respected League Of Women Voters – founded in 1920 – says these new laws make it impossible, in Florida in this instance, for it to carry out one of its core missions: registering new voters.
As the links between extreme right wing republicans and other groups and the Conservatives begin to be more exposed (as the Observer did in its October 16th issue) we should take note here in the UK. Simply “leaving people alone” could be another step in building a right wing hegemony here in the UK as well.
See also:
• Harman: Lib Dems “colluding” with Tories to deny millions the vote – Shamik Das, September 29th 2011
• Reality dawns for Lib Dems who’ll lose out under seat cull plans – Shamik Das, September 5th 2011
• Electoral reformers should oppose the coalition’s gerrymandering – Will Straw, July 28th 2010
• Clegg’s Bill is undemocratic and partisan – John Costello, July 23rd 2010
• Lib Dem turkeys vote for Christmas – Shamik Das & Maria Arbiter, July 8th 2010
47 Responses to “The coalition are conspiring to lock the left out of the electoral process”
SomeRandomBint
@Rob
You’re mistaking not wanting to vote, with not having the facility to register for the right to vote. You don’t have to use your vote, but what this idea seems to want to do, is make it harder for people to register for their democratic right. It’s complicating the process of registration to benefit the minority who have no interest in (or can’t be bothered with the paperwork) at least giving themselves the option.
andthesewalls
Interesting article about the coalition trying to make it harder for you to register and vote, http://t.co/ntYHSF0W
paul barker
Classic piece of “guilt by association” smearing, what has all the reasonable criticism of The American Hard Right got to do with The LibDems ?
Jane Shaw
RT @leftfootfwd: The coalition are conspiring to lock the left out of the electoral process http://t.co/cKus4s6S
Harry Barnes
In addition to the three and a half million people missing from electoral registers as assessed by the Electoral Commission prior to the last General Election, there are many additional problems about the accuracy of existing registrations – let alone the mass problems that would arise from current Government proposals. How accurate are the forms which are currently returned to electoral registration officers? How many people just confirm the information sent to them on the registration forms either in error or to hide the details of all the qualifying residents in a household – a habit which was given a boost by the poll tax and has not died out. There are also shortcomings in the range of people who are entitled to register. Surely anyone who is established as a resident in the UK should be entitled to be enfranchised as they are subject to the nation’s legal requirements, including taxation – what of “no taxation without representation?” The only limits on enfranchisement should be (a) a qualifying age and (b) a carefully monitored exclusion of those with a very serious mental impairment. Yet residents from overseas are only currently entitled to registration if they come from Commonwealth nations or the Republic of Ireland. Why not others?
A proactive electoral registration system needs putting into operation. It would help if the vote was given to 16 year olds. Whilst “attainers” at 15, they could first be registered via their schools. This would make then easier to be tracked for registration purposes later in life. Regular canvassing should also take place by electoral registration officers to gain more accurate registration. Then modern technology could be used by electoral registration officers to help in the compiling of registers and to make effective use of the provisions of the Rolling Registration system – i.e. to see that names are placed on the relevant registers as people move their residence within a mobile society. This would also end the dubious need to allow some people to have their names appearing on more then one register.
Tom Paine and the Chartists (with the important addition of the Suffragettes) knew the significance the franchise. A full franchise was thought finally to have been achieved in the UK in 1928, but we have allowed it to wither on the vine. Establishing a full franchise should be a priority for all democrats and especially for democratic socialists who have a special belief in the importance of social equality.
When I was an MP I sort to tackle the matter via a Private Members Bill in the 1992-3 session and became involved with a body called “Full Franchise”. Then I pushed various Ten Minute Rule Bills and amendments to legislation, especially to what became the 2000 Representation of the People’s Act. But the only success I can claim (as the Government took it up) was the initial and perfectly inadequate provisions on Rolling Electoral Registration. Since those times information technology has bounded forth and the hopes contained in my proposals could be considerably polished and advanced.
Labour should be pressed to take these matters on board. Ideologically they don’t need even to frighten middle England by saying that it is a socialist measure. If they need a vested interest before they can take up a principle, then a full franchise would lead to a future redrawing of constituency boundaries. This time in Labour’s favour. For the Electoral Commission shows that those who are missing from the registers are a high percentage of the poor, ethnic minorities, the young and the highly mobile such as those in bed-sitter land. The only problem for Labour is that it would have to start paying serious attention to the well-being of these categories.