Simon Lock

Changes to the way in which voter registration takes place risk an estimated 800,000 people falling off the electoral register, according to claims made by the Labour Party.

The party fears that the change, from household registration to a new system of Individual Electoral Registration (IER) is most likely to affect university students who do not live at home for most of the year.

The Electoral Commission itself has raised concerns about the way in which IER is being implemented, with the speed of the change prompting it to encourage the government to undertake a voter registration drive.

The Electoral Commission has also warned that without a significant publicity drive, the government is risking up to 1.9 million people disappearing from the register.

However, a Cabinet Office spokesperson told The Guardian that the system of individual registration was being implemented to tackle fraud.

The spokesperson said: “We have worked hard with local authorities for years now to clean up the register – any entries removed will be people who have moved house, died or never existed because they were registered fraudulently.”

In December 2015, the first electoral register figures to be released under IER showed a drop in the number of registered electors compared with the year before. The effects of these changes may be felt in the upcoming elections in May.

Although the changes have been implemented to make the register more accurate and to stop fraud and errors, approximately one in ten people have not been automatically transferred to the new list of voters.

Among the 1.8 per cent of voters estimated to have dropped off the register, areas with high student populations are most severely affected.

For example, Canterbury saw a 13 per cent drop, while Cambridge and Dundee West both experienced a fall of 11 per cent.

Since the introduction of the new system, Cambridge has seen a fall in registration numbers. There was a drop of 10,104 electors between the figures published in December 2014 under the old system versus those published in 2015 under the new one.

As of 1st February this year, there were 81,395 voters registered on Cambridge City Council’s records.

Cambridge has around 20,000 students who are eligible to register and vote, with 12,000 of them living in university accommodation.

Although it is not currently possible to say exactly how many students are actually registered to vote due to a change in the way Cambridge City Council reports its data, the body expects to have this remedied in the near future.

Vicky Breading, a spokesperson for Cambridge City Council, told Varsity that “we have invested a lot of time in encouraging students to register, by holding events, using social media, placing registration cards in pigeon holes and sending direct e-mails”.

Today is National Voter Registration Day. As part of this, Cambridge City Council will be running a registration desk, organised by CUSU, on the Sidgwick Site from 1pm.