Electoral Registration in Britain: Inequality, Reform, and the Prospects of Automatic Registration

Abstract

In many countries electoral registration of citizens is initiated by the state, however in Britain this is not the case. Any eligible citizen wishing to cast a vote must first apply to join the electoral register. In 2014 the Individual Electoral Registration (IER) reform was brought in as an anti-fraud measure and altered the registration system in Britain, removing the option for people to be registered by a co-habitant. Yet despite the significance of this change, it has rarely been the focus of research in the study of British politics,so the history, influence, and significance of the reform remain understudied. To address these gaps this thesis seeks to explain the influence of the reform on the difficulty of voter registration in Britain and whether the reform made otherwise politically alienated peoples’ likelihood to register change. This thesis also explores the motivations behind the reform and what lessons Britain can learn from the registration systems of other countries. It achieves this by answering four motivating questions. Firstly, how and why did the electoral registration model change in Britain? Second, how did the 2014 Individual Electoral Registration reform affect registration levels and attitudes in Britain? Third, how does the UK compare to other countries in terms of registration difficulty? Finally, how can the UK make voter registration easier? Answers are provided in a series of empirical chapters applying a series of research methods. The first (chapter 3) takes uses document analysis to create a timeline of the different steps and motivations behind the IER reform. The second (chapter 4) applies British Election Study data to a series of regression models to look at whether the reform influenced the relationship between political alienation and registration and that between civic duty and registration. The third (chapter 5) is a comparative analysis of registration models using data gathered from 62 countries, and applying a difficulty of registration index created for this research. The fourth (chapter 6) discusses how the UK could improve its registration model by looking at alternative registration methods employed by other countries that do not practice automatic voter registration. In these chapters, we can observe the following – Firstly that political parties’ approaches to IER were more about statecraft, notably the Conservatives wanting to redraw constituency boundaries in their favour whilst the Labour party employed statecraft measures to resist changes to a system that had benefited them. Secondly, people we identify as politically alienated remained as unlikely to register following the reform, whereas the relationship between civic duty and registration strengthened slightly. Thirdly, chapter 5 finds that the UK has a comparatively difficult registration system with features most commonly found in flawed democracies. Finally, either the introduction of automatic voter registration, greater communication between civic and electoral registers at the point of entry to electoral registers, or potentially the introduction of same day registration on early polling days, would make registration easier and more inclusive.

Date of Award	6 Jan 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Maria Sobolewska (Supervisor)