OVER the next few days there will be probably the last chance this decade for Parliament to introduce stronger safeguards against voting fraud. At present, the opportunity looks as though it will be missed as the Electoral Administration Bill shuttles between the Commons and Lords before becoming law.
The need for action has been underlined by the various scandals over postal and other vote frauds revealed in The Times. The Electoral Commission has for some time recommended changes to improve security. The key one is the replacement of household registration, under which all the names in a house are signed off by a head of household, by individual registration. This requires individual identifiers such as a signature and registration number, a national insurance number, for example.
Ministers, and the Labour Party, have objected that individual registration would lead to a decline in the number of people registering, as happened when a similar change took place in Northern Ireland (although fraud had been greater there). The subsequent government Bill did not include individual registration, although it did suggest pilot schemes involving personal identifiers.
Not much changed during the Commons stages, but the Government did move in the Lords. Ministers accepted a cross-party amendment tabled by Lord Elder, a Labour peer, to introduce personal identifiers, including a signature and date of birth, for people applying to vote by post and proxy. These will be checked against the statement that must be returned with a postal vote ballot paper. That should tackle many of the most outrageous cases of postal voting fraud.
The Government won the support of MPs on Tuesday, however, for the rejection of a further Lords amendment for general individual registration. Ministers say that they accept the principle, but in the time-honoured phrase believe that it is “not yet ready to be extended to the rest of the UK” because of their worries over underregistration. Bridget Prentice, Labour MP for Lewisham East, said that three million people are not on the register who should be, and, if there were a 10 per cent drop, as in Northern Ireland, that would add another four million people. The Labour fear is that this change would hit them much more than other parties.
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But this is a false argument. There need not be a choice between fighting fraud and maximising registration and turnout. They are parallel, not conflicting, issues. The case for individual registration of all voters is overwhelming and is widely accepted. The Tories and the Liberal Democrats are absolutely right to press the point, and Labour is wrong to resist.
At the same time, an intensive drive is needed to boost registration, especially among younger voters, via door-to-door canvassing, or, possibly, as Gordon Prentice, a Labour backbencher suggested, by some form of small financial incentive to register.
The Bill has returned to the Lords for another vote on Tuesday. This is exactly the type of constitutional issue where the Upper House has a role in pressing the Government to think again. Ensuring public confidence in the electoral system is an absolute priority, which should not be fudged.