Thursday, June 06, 2019
Was voter suppression at work in the European elections?
The day after people voted in the European elections, I posted a piece recording how hundreds of EU citizens were turned away from polling stations and denied a vote in that contest.
The media reported that people had turned up at their local polling station only to find their name had been crossed off the register. It became a common theme across the UK, with the hashtag #DeniedMyVote trending on Twitter as it was flooded with accounts of EU citizens being prevented from voting after confusion among election officials and administrative errors.
Now the Guardian has revealed new data showing that as few as one in 10 EU citizens were able to cast their vote in some areas of Britain. Despite this, the government has refused to heed calls for a public inquiry into why so many EU citizens said they had been denied a vote in an election that turned into a proxy ballot on Brexit:
Figures obtained by the Guardian from local authorities across the country suggest there was a lack of awareness among EU citizens that they needed to notify their councils that they were going to vote in the UK and not in their home country by 7 May. They had to do this using a form known as a UC1.
The Guardian asked more than 50 councils how many UC1 forms had been issued to voters on their register and how many had been returned by the cut-off date.
The return rate for the top 10 local authorities with EU citizens – Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and seven London boroughs – was 21%.
In Birmingham, home to almost 35,000 EU citizens registered to vote, the return of forms was as low as 10.56%.
In Brent in north-west London, which has one of the highest number of EU nationals on the register, only 20.74% of voters who were sent the forms by the council returned them on time.
Kingston upon Thames appears to have had the highest rate of return in the country at 43% but other local authorities were not as successful in getting the message out. Some constituencies outside London had returns as low as 11% and 12%.
This catalogue of errors and administrative incompetence happened despite Electoral Commission warnings after the last EU elections in 2014 that the process needed to be easier for EU citizens. I am not clear exactly what they did to try and change the process, but clearly Government Ministers ignored that advice.
It is also the case that many Britons living abroad who had registered to vote in the UK had also been disenfranchised because their ballot papers had not arrived in time. Where this happens elsewhere it is often described as voter suppression. What would we call it here, when the UK Government refuses to act to enable European citizens to more easily exercise their voting rights?
The media reported that people had turned up at their local polling station only to find their name had been crossed off the register. It became a common theme across the UK, with the hashtag #DeniedMyVote trending on Twitter as it was flooded with accounts of EU citizens being prevented from voting after confusion among election officials and administrative errors.
Now the Guardian has revealed new data showing that as few as one in 10 EU citizens were able to cast their vote in some areas of Britain. Despite this, the government has refused to heed calls for a public inquiry into why so many EU citizens said they had been denied a vote in an election that turned into a proxy ballot on Brexit:
Figures obtained by the Guardian from local authorities across the country suggest there was a lack of awareness among EU citizens that they needed to notify their councils that they were going to vote in the UK and not in their home country by 7 May. They had to do this using a form known as a UC1.
The Guardian asked more than 50 councils how many UC1 forms had been issued to voters on their register and how many had been returned by the cut-off date.
The return rate for the top 10 local authorities with EU citizens – Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and seven London boroughs – was 21%.
In Birmingham, home to almost 35,000 EU citizens registered to vote, the return of forms was as low as 10.56%.
In Brent in north-west London, which has one of the highest number of EU nationals on the register, only 20.74% of voters who were sent the forms by the council returned them on time.
Kingston upon Thames appears to have had the highest rate of return in the country at 43% but other local authorities were not as successful in getting the message out. Some constituencies outside London had returns as low as 11% and 12%.
This catalogue of errors and administrative incompetence happened despite Electoral Commission warnings after the last EU elections in 2014 that the process needed to be easier for EU citizens. I am not clear exactly what they did to try and change the process, but clearly Government Ministers ignored that advice.
It is also the case that many Britons living abroad who had registered to vote in the UK had also been disenfranchised because their ballot papers had not arrived in time. Where this happens elsewhere it is often described as voter suppression. What would we call it here, when the UK Government refuses to act to enable European citizens to more easily exercise their voting rights?
Comments:
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Yes, voter suppression.Also the Electoral Commission needs to be expanded and given more power to act.The whole system needs to be speeded up and simplified. We must also consider that The Govnt,who wish for Brexit will drag their feet on improving a system that they do not appreciate.
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