There was a time when the summer months were a ‘business as usual' period for Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) and their teams – with the main focus on preparing for the annual canvass.
This summer is very different. EROs will be making wide-ranging preparations for the transition to Individual Electoral Registration (IER) – the biggest change to the electoral registration system in over 80 years. The task ahead may seem daunting but the Electoral Commission and the Cabinet Office are doing a lot to provide help and support.
IER will address vulnerabilities in the current electoral registration process, make it more secure and give each individual the responsibility of registering to vote. But it needs to be implemented carefully if we are going to succeed in maximising both the accuracy and the completeness of the electoral registers – and put voters first.
To prepare for the transition, there are two important things EROs must do in the run-up to IER ‘going live' in summer next year. First, they will need to have a clear strategy for how they will tell their local residents about the new electoral registration system, and what each resident needs to do. Each ERO will face different challenges depending on the make-up of their area and they may need to vary their activities on a ward by ward basis.
Second, the last comprehensive annual canvass on the ‘old' system – including door-knocking to follow-up people who don't return their canvass form – will be critical. Getting each register as up-to-date as possible in the last old-style canvass will save time and money in future, because it should help to reduce avoidable chasing-up during the transition period.
EROs across Great Britain are currently testing the IT system that will be used to match the names and addresses of existing electors against the Department for Work and Pensions database. Where electors are matched they can be automatically transferred to the IER register. So, this dummy-run of the matching process will give EROs a pretty good idea of the scale of the task they should expect to face in 2014, in terms of reaching those people whose entries don't match, and getting them to provide their personal details in order to stay registered.
Everyone at the Electoral Commission and the Cabinet Office appreciates the financial challenges facing EROs and their teams, and the transition to IER will bring extra pressures. The Government has already distributed £3m to EROs to help them with the transition during the 2013/14 financial year. They recently announced that an additional £4.2m would be made available for EROs to bid for to help with registration. We and the Cabinet Office have also changed the way we provide guidance, resources and support in response to feedback from EROs.
The Commission has recently published guidance, endorsed by SOLACE, the Association of Electoral Administrators and the UK Electoral Advisory Board (the 12 Regional Returning Officers across the UK), on planning how to tell local residents about the transition to IER. It covers the different approaches and tactics that EROs can use to target residents in their area including by letter and via local advertising opportunities. We are also providing user-tested templates to help, so that EROs don't waste time and money each developing their own resources.
In September this year we will be publishing more guidance, which will focus on implementing the change itself from 2014 onward. Commission staff and Cabinet Office Regional Delivery Managers are working together across Great Britain to help EROs and their teams.
We are also proposing changes to the performance standards for EROs during the transition to IER. We think we should focus on two simple questions: have you got a robust plan which reflects the particular challenges in your area? And how effectively is it working in practice (with changes made in real time in response to what happens in your local area)? We want to minimise the reporting burdens on EROs.
