{"id":1236,"date":"2018-01-19T16:39:12","date_gmt":"2018-01-19T16:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.electoral-reform.org.uk\/?p=1236"},"modified":"2018-01-19T17:15:45","modified_gmt":"2018-01-19T17:15:45","slug":"doubts-over-turnout-figures-could-have-serious-implications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/doubts-over-turnout-figures-could-have-serious-implications\/","title":{"rendered":"Doubts over turnout figures could have serious implications"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Turnout\u00a0is\u00a0a vital measure for understanding\u00a0our\u00a0relationship with politics, whether it be\u00a0low or high.\u00a0If\u00a0\u00a0people\u00a0do not vote, it\u00a0tells us they are being failed by\u00a0politics.\u00a0\u00a0If people do vote in large numbers, then\u00a0it can be argued\u00a0the\u00a0Government which emerges after an election has a\u00a0much\u00a0stronger\u00a0mandate to run the country\u00a0as it sees fit.<\/p>\n

Given its importance, a\u00a0new paper<\/a>\u00a0from a team\u00a0of academics at the Universities of Oxford and Manchester which challenge many of our assumptions on turnout, is deserving of significant attention.<\/p>\n

The issue lies in that turnout\u00a0\u2013 the number of people that vote in any given election –\u00a0is not actually that easy to measure.\u00a0In the\u00a0UK\u00a0it\u00a0is\u00a0given as a\u00a0percentage\u00a0of the electoral register,\u00a0so\u00a0if 44m\u00a0people\u00a0are registered and 22m ballots are cast,\u00a0the turnout figure will be given as 50%.<\/p>\n

Counting the ballots\u00a0on election day is\u00a0relatively easy, but working out how many people are actually on the electoral register\u00a0is trickier than it sounds.<\/p>\n

This is because there are\u00a0perfectly legal\u00a0duplicates on the register.\u00a0For instance, second-home owners and university students may register at multiple addresses though they may only vote in one place\u00a0per election.\u00a0If you\u00a0split your time between two homes you could vote in two sets of local elections, but only once in a general election.<\/p>\n

A further reason is\u00a0redundancies\u00a0and inaccuracies\u00a0\u2013 voters who\u00a0move\u00a0house and register at their new address but aren\u2019t removed from their old one.<\/p>\n

These can build up as the UK does not a have a centralised electoral roll. Each local authority holds their local electoral roll and manages their own elections. This\u00a0makes it very hard to centrally rig an election in the UK, but also leads to people being on multiple electoral rolls.<\/p>\n

To work out the size of the roll you have to apply some complicated maths to\u00a0estimate how many errors there are and\u00a0remove\u00a0the duplicates.\u00a0You then use this number as the official size of the electoral roll and then work out the turnout.<\/p>\n

This is where the problems started.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The\u00a0paper\u00a0authors estimate that, on average, UK turnout is underestimated by around 9.4%, on average, which would boost UK turnout\u00a0north\u00a0of 70%.<\/b><\/p>\n

This is both positive and dramatic. It is often said that people are not interested in politics, and this argument is grounded in turnout figures which may have been hugely underestimated.<\/p>\n

Such\u00a0inaccuracy\u00a0also\u00a0throws into question the way the register works and voters access to it in general.\u00a0Whilst you can register online there is no way to check if you are registered already. Voters end up\u00a0inadvertently\u00a0registering multiple times\u00a0and can\u2019t easily correct this\u00a0themselves.\u00a0Some of the inaccuracies in the register will also work against voters being able to vote at all \u2013 if, for instance, they are registered in the wrong place.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the electoral register is used for the drawing of electoral boundaries.\u00a0As duplicates are often produced by people regularly moving house,\u00a0and this regular movement is usually concentrated in urban areas.\u00a0Constituencies\u00a0where duplicates and errors are concentrated\u00a0end up with\u00a0fewer voters.\u00a0It would be far simpler to use population and nationality data from the\u00a0census\u00a0to design\u00a0constituencies\u00a0with equal\u00a0amounts of\u00a0eligible\u00a0voters.\u00a0To ensure citizens are fairly represented in Parliament, ensuring boundaries are based on sound data is vital.<\/p>\n

As has been identified,\u00a0where there are\u00a0mistakes\u00a0in electoral data, it can have very real consequences for democracy. Findings such as these should cause us to pause for thought and wonder how we can have the fullest possible register.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Turnout\u00a0is\u00a0a vital measure for understanding\u00a0our\u00a0relationship with politics, whether it be\u00a0low or high.\u00a0If\u00a0\u00a0people\u00a0do not vote, it\u00a0tells us they are being failed by\u00a0politics.\u00a0\u00a0If people do vote in large numbers, then\u00a0it can be argued\u00a0the\u00a0Government which emerges after an election has a\u00a0much\u00a0stronger\u00a0mandate to run the country\u00a0as it sees fit. Given its importance, a\u00a0new paper\u00a0from a team\u00a0of academics at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[126],"tags":[239,12],"class_list":["post-1236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-voter-registration","tag-turnout","tag-voter-registration"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}