Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
200-219)
DR ROGER
MORTIMORE AND
DR STUART
WILKS-HEEG
9 SEPTEMBER 2010
Q200 Sheila Gilmore: Do you have
any suggestions as to ways in which we might take steps to improve
this then, preferably in a short space of time rather than a long
one?
Dr Mortimore: Certainly not in
the very short term. One of the clearest things is that the biggest
driver behind why people do bother to register is either that
they are politically engaged or that they feel that they have
a duty to do so—they believe in the democratic electoral
system—and that is something that has declined over the
past few decades. In particular, if you look at whether people
feel they have a duty to vote, that is almost universal in people
above middle age. It's much less universal in people from the
age of 40 downwards. That is clearly tied to people who, even
if they're not interested in a vote, if they feel they have a
duty to do it will still feel they have a duty to make sure they're
on the register. For those who don't feel they have a duty—and
that is probably not something that's going to change—it
is all about engagement, about seeing the point of elections and
why it is worth while being able to vote, and the wider problem
of how you get people interested enough in elections to want to
be on the register is the long-term point of it. The other problem
we haven't mentioned yet is that quite a lot of people who aren't
on the register simply don't know they're not on the register.
That's always obvious when it comes up to an election, you suddenly
get people registering at the last minute; you get a lot of people
turning up at the polling station and finding they can't vote.
Clearly, there is a possibility of at least a minor improvement
through information campaigns, getting that message across, more
effectively, that you need to check that you are on the register
and you need to check regularly and you need to fill out the form
every year to stay on the register.
Dr Wilks-Heeg: I concur with much
of that. I don't think there is very much that can be done in
the very short term to improve the register, if we mean by December
2010. It's too late. We're in the middle of the annual canvass
and some local authorities are very advanced in that process already.
It would be difficult to do anything at this very late juncture.
However, we do know, very clearly, from the research that exists—particularly
that from the 1980s and 1990s—that there are particular
practices which Electoral Registration Officers can follow, which
if they all follow, virtually to the letter, will maximise the
annual canvass return, which is crucial, which then in turn maximises
the completeness and accuracy of the registers. In the 1990s that
research was done annually and then was disseminated back to EROs
to advise them very precisely how they should be undertaking the
task. That very rapidly corrected the problem of the loss of electors
which was associated with the community charge or poll tax in
the early 1990s. So we know that things can be done. Times have
changed since then, forms of electoral registration have changed
slightly since then, but many of those lessons still apply. They
are still very much embedded in the Electoral Commission's advice
and guidance to Electoral Registration Officers and also in the
Electoral Commission's performance standards framework. So those
principles are still there. However, it would seem that there
are certain local authorities where perhaps not all of this best
practice is being used, but that is certainly, in terms of future
canvasses, a key area to focus on.
Q201 Chair: I don't know if you heard
my question earlier to the witnesses from the Boundary Commissions
about why we register electors rather than people, since we are
electing Members of Parliament, and Members of Parliament represent
all people, regardless of party, registration, and indeed nationality,
and I argued that in my own case, certainly, I had more casework
from non-registered people than registered people, and I have
checked on that. Why do we do register voters rather than people?
Does that make sense?
Dr Wilks-Heeg: I think this is
an important issue to raise. I would agree with the answers from
the Boundary Commissioners. There is a problem using population
figures because we don't have a population register and we obviously
only get the accurate figures every 10 years—and there are
questions about the extent to which the census captures the population.
I think there could be a way—this would involve fairly significant
changes to the Bill, I would imagine—of trying to at least
take account of differential populations which MPs serve and which
the new constituencies would comprise. If you look at the moment,
there are some constituencies with well over 100,000 people in
them, as many as 125,000 in some of the London constituencies,
so in terms of casework that's a significant difference to what
we would see in some of the smaller constituencies. So I do think
there are grounds to look at this more closely, given the practice
which has grown up over several decades of MPs—I don't need
to tell you—taking on more and more casework and finding
that this is a growing part of their role.
Chair: Andrew?
Q202 Mr Turner: Sorry, could I follow
that up, because I wasn't quite clear what you meant by your answer.
The number of non-registered people presumably who should be registered,
not those who should not be registered? We're not talking about
Somalis?
Dr Wilks-Heeg: Well, clearly,
Somalis can still go to their local MP, and I'm sure they do,
and add to an MP's casework burden, but you're right to distinguish,
yes. There is a difference between people who are eligible to
be on the electoral roll and aren't, and then people who are simply
living somewhere and not eligible to be on that roll. So yes,
there is a distinction that needs to be drawn. At the moment we
don't really have the data sophisticated enough to estimate the
difference between those two groups of people. Hopefully, with
some of the changes with some of the 2011 Census questions we'll
be able to do that much more precisely.
Dr Mortimore: It's a particular
problem in terms of information. We know exactly how many registered
electors there are. We know, with some degree of accuracy, what
the total population is, from the census and from the ONS estimates,
but there are no figures at all for people who are qualified to
be electors, in other words British Commonwealth and EU citizens.
Those figures are just not available.
Q203 Mr Turner: One of the points
you raise—it was Dr Wilks-Heeg who said this—the highest
concentration of under-registration is most likely to be found
in metropolitan areas; smaller towns and cities with a large student
population; and coastal areas. Now, some of those are people who
are bad at getting registered and some of them may be registered
somewhere else. Is that a reasonable distinction?
Dr Wilks-Heeg: It is, particularly
with students, clearly. Students can be registered in two different
places: parental address and wherever they're studying. We don't
know the extent to which students do register in both places or
not. Anecdotal evidence I have, certainly from Liverpool, is that
many students choose not to go on the register in Liverpool, on
the assumption that they're registered at their parental address.
Likewise, with some of the coastal areas, but by no means all,
there may be people who have second homes there, and therefore
there would be a possibility for them to be registered in that
locality as well. Again, we have no idea, because we still do
not have the coordinated online register of electors first proposed
in 2004, I believe. We don't know the extent to which these legitimate
double entries on the registers exist.
Q204 Mr Turner: Is there any correlation
between the size of wards—in my constituency there are 2,500
electors, and in Birmingham there are over 20,000—and sufficient
feeling that one is involved, that one ought to get registered?
Dr Wilks-Heeg: I have never seen
any research evidence on that. I would wonder whether there is
likely to be a relationship. I think the main drivers of the difference
in registration are who lives in those areas, not the size of
the ward. So if you've got a ward with very heavy concentrations
of private sector rented housing, very rapid population turnover,
a high proportion of young people, a high proportion of people
from particular minority groups, then you would expect the registration
to be lower in that ward than a well settled ward with high levels
of owner occupation, with people living there five, 10 years,
and so on.
Q205 Mr Turner: Finally, what is
the difference, if there is a difference, between England in general—perhaps
there is no such thing as "England in general"—but
England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland? It was said that
in Northern Ireland the number of people registered was over 100%
of those people present. I don't know whether that is true but
have you had any information about that?
Dr Wilks-Heeg: Yes, it was one
of the reasons for the Electoral Fraud (Northern Ireland) Act.
There was a concern that there was systematic over-registration
which was fraudulent, and there were ghost electors on the Northern
Ireland electoral roll. That's one of the reasons, it's assumed,
when individual voter registration was brought in in Northern
Ireland, that we saw a very sharp drop in the registration rate
which now stands I think at about 84%. As you say, I think it
was previously over 100%. There is a difficulty calculating registration
rates because of the unreliability of some of the population estimates
and also the issues I referred to earlier about double registrations
across electoral rolls, and so on. So we do occasionally find
parliamentary constituencies in England, Scotland or Wales with
registration rates over 100%. It's just a quirk of the statistics
which comes up occasionally.
Mr Turner: Has Dr Mortimore anything
to add?
Dr Mortimore: I don't think I
have anything to add to that.
Eleanor Laing (in the Chair): Thank you,
Andrew. The Chairman gives his apologies. He has had to go to
attend to some urgent business of the Committee and he will be
back very shortly. Stephen Williams?
Q206 Stephen Williams: Thank you,
temporary Chairman. Can I come back to this completeness of the
register. I remember when rolling registers came in they were
meant to ensure the register was more complete and accurate but,
from the evidence that you have both presented, that does not
appear to be the case—or maybe it would have been worse
without rolling registration. What improvements do you think could
be brought about? I am about to move house, and I'm pretty sure
the BBC Licensing Authority, the energy companies and everyone
else will catch up with me very quickly as to the fact that I
have moved into a property, but it will be largely down to me
to re-register myself at a different address. Is there a process
that needs to be changed, do you think?
Dr Mortimore: I think it's true,
and it's probably a little bit wider than just the moving house
issue. It's perfectly practically feasible for there to be much
greater cross checking of different administrative records to
find out who are the people who are existing or not on the register.
Clearly there are legal issues to that, there are moral issues
of privacy to that, and there is a possibility that a part of
the population would be seriously alienated by that being done.
It would be a big decision to decide that you wanted to do that,
but clearly that possibility is there if it was decided that it
was a good thing to proceed with.
Q207 Stephen Williams: One of your
comments mentioned the poll tax situation in the early 1990s and
the effect that that had on under registration, particularly amongst
younger people. But I run into quite a lot of people who, when
I discover they are not on the register, say, "Well, I registered
for council tax, as it now is, and I assumed the council would
therefore put me down on the register." That is almost a
reversal of the poll tax problem. Is that not a simple process
that could be reformed?
Dr Mortimore: Yes, I think it
is a very simple process and, you're right, we found that a lot
in our research that people say that they expect that it will
happen, they can't understand why it doesn't happen.
Q208 Stephen Williams: Can I come
back to what Andrew's question was about, double registration?
I represent a university city and at every election I come across
people who say they are voting for me. The trouble is they are
doing it in Hampshire rather than in Bristol, and seaside towns
were mentioned as well. I am registered—I am sure we all
are—I have voted in London elections before as well as Bristol
elections. Is it right that people should be able to continue
to have dual registration, if not the dual exercise of that franchise?
Dr Wilks-Heeg: I think at the
moment we have no option other than to allow that, given that
those people won't necessarily know where they're going to be
when the election is called, and where they'll be on the actual
day.
Q209 Stephen Williams: We have postal
voting, don't we?
Dr Wilks-Heeg: We do. I suppose
that would be one safeguard against the problem, but it adds an
issue of complexity into it for the elector. What would obviously
help is if we did have this co-ordinated online register of electors,
and yet we still don't. The fact that people are able in certain
categories to register in some places does open up the possibility
that they do vote in two places. There are anecdotal stories,
and so on, that this happened in the 2010 general election. I
have no idea on what scale. So I think it probably is something
that we would want to tighten up in the system of registration,
as part of the broader agenda of introducing individual registration
and getting a co-ordinated online register of electors.
Q210 Stephen Williams: Can I just
have one final question about this coordinated online registration
which I think you said was first proposed in 2004? I had not heard
of this before. Why has that not been introduced? Is it inertia,
resources? It is not any Government's policy? Who suggested it
back in 2004?
Dr Wilks-Heeg: I think it was
announced by Nick Raynsford to the House of Commons in January
2004, when he was the Minister responsible. I think it's a long
story and you probably have to get into a discussion with the
relevant civil servants and the Electoral Commission about it.
I think part of the problem was that neither the MOJ nor the Electoral
Commission wanted to be designated as the keeper of this online
co-ordinated register. I think there were also technical problems
which bedevilled it, because different local authorities use different
software and there was a big problem to make sure these could
be standardised in some way, and ultimately all of this slowed
down progress significantly. That was my understanding.
Chair: I am about to ask colleagues to
speed up a little if they wish to get to the end of the questions.
Eleanor?
Q211 Eleanor Laing: I can give a
point of information to Stephen Williams and the witnesses on
his last question. I was one of the signatories to the amendments
to the 2004 Bill which proposed both core and individual voter
registration. At least we now have individual voter registration.
But that is only a point of information. It is a pity it wasn't
brought in before. But will individual voter registration improve
the situation?
Dr Wilks-Heeg: Yes, in terms of
accuracy it should do. Whether it will in terms of completeness
for the register is quite a different question. I think there
is a danger that those two things are being conflated in much
discussion. If we look at the experience in Northern Ireland,
the register there now is estimated to be, I think, 84% complete
and 94% accurate. Now that's a big contrast and I don't think
we would be willing to accept—across the UK as a whole—a
registration rate of 84%. So we know that it could impact. The
Northern Ireland case is very complicated and it's very difficult
to derive precise lessons from that, but I think it is instructive
to make a comparison with that. In terms of the accuracy of the
registers, I think individual registration would clearly help
to make sure we remove ghost voters from the rolls. We don't know
how many there are. We know there are likely to be some—people
who simply don't exist. It will be clear that they don't have
a National Insurance number, etc, and that will deal with that
problem. In terms of other ways in which we would need to clean
up the registers, individual registration probably only goes so
far. What will be critical is the extent to which electoral registration
officers can access other data sources and what data sources they
do access. So, for example, if they access information on passports
or addresses held by the DVLA, or something like that, and only
certain people have driving licences, that is only going to take
you so far, and there may be, obviously, technical and legal issues
about accessing that kind of data in any case. Likewise, in terms
of eliminating the problem of electors being registered simultaneously
in different places when they're not supposed to be. Again—as
the legislation proposes—you would need to supplement it
with CORE (Coordinated On-line Register of Electors), otherwise
you simply can't know whether you've got voters registered in
multiple different places. So there are several things which need
to be added in and, crucially, the annual canvass will remain
very important in terms of updating the registers every year to
make sure they're complete and accurate.
Q212 Eleanor Laing: I am delighted
to hear you say that, because it is roughly what I said in 2004.
Perhaps they will listen to you. Just taking forward the point
about other sources of information, my understanding is that that
would require changes to the law on data sharing and data protection
but from the evidence that you have gathered in your studies,
would you advocate that as a good idea? We're all in favour of
data protection, but is there a balance to be achieved? Should
local authorities be able to use even their own records, for example,
their housing benefit records, to check on their registration
records?
Dr Wilks-Heeg: They do that kind
of thing already to a significant degree and in fact EROs do have
quite significant powers, in terms of being able to request information
from other sources. Some of them choose to use it; some of them
don't. Some of them say they have difficulties accessing that
information because of their own fears and also the fears of other
bodies about data protection. But certainly, EROs at the moment
routinely are—or at least they should be—looking at
things like council tax records and other records held by the
local authority. They should be getting notices from the Registrar
of Deaths, and so on. I can't think of a local authority that
doesn't do that. They also have the capacity to request information
from registered social landlords, even private landlords, residential
homes, universities, university halls of residence. The extent
to which they currently do this varies enormously, and that is
the crucial point, I think.
Q213 Eleanor Laing: Thank you. One
quick last question: have you made any distinction in your assessments
between people who have failed to register because they have moved
house but they'll do it the following year, and it was a mistake,
and they will catch up, and those who deliberately decide they
will not register because they don't want to be registered?
Dr Mortimore: I don't think it's
possible to draw a hard line between them. There are a small number,
undoubtedly, who are absolutely determined they will not register
because they're hostile to the process, but a far bigger proportion
who don't register because they don't care about it, or don't
care much so they might get round to it but they haven't got round
to it yet, which goes on year after year after year. Of course,
if you just ask people, as we do in our surveys, you don't always
get a straight answer. They won't necessarily want to admit that
they're not intending to, they would rather say, "I will
but I haven't got round to it yet." So I don't think you
can clearly distinguish one from the other.
Q214 Simon Hart: Let us move away
from registration for a second. In your evidence, Dr Wilks-Heeg,
you say, "The Bill has been introduced with much haste, militating
against expert consultation, proper pre-legislative scrutiny and
informed debate, both within and without the Houses of Parliament",
which is quite strong stuff. The first part of my question is:
what do you believe the consequences of that are for voter engagement
and getting a piece of legislation which has voter interest rather
than party political interest? That is my first question. The
second part is this: we heard the Boundaries Commission evidence.
You were here for that.
Dr Wilks-Heeg: I was here.
Simon Hart: Yes. One or two things struck
me, one of which is the enthusiasm with which they are looking
forward to this task; they can't wait to get stuck in. Then of
course theirs is a logistical problem—some of our problems
are rather more political. They advocated a sort of "big
bang" approach and if we connect there your comments, your
lack of pre-legislative scrutiny concerns with the idea of "Look,
just let's charge down the door and take the pain"—and
they blame that on the fact that people are just basically against
change in whatever form it comes, whenever it comes. Do you think
if there was satisfactory pre-legislative scrutiny, the change
would be more graciously received because people would think a
proper process has been gone through and evidence has been properly
considered, and in those circumstances a big bang is fine, after
a proper process of preparation? Sorry, a long question. Do you
get my drift?
Dr Wilks-Heeg: I'll try to answer
it as fully as I can. Perhaps it does seem like a strong statement
but I assume this Committee would agree—I can't speak for
all of you, obviously—that there has been haste in bringing
this Bill to Parliament and that that has restricted the scope
for pre-legislative scrutiny. I don't think there's any doubt
that that's the case. Chair: I don't think there is
any disagreement here.
Dr Wilks-Heeg: Yes. Allied to
that is that, this is also a very big and ambitious undertaking.
We've heard that all of the boundaries of every existing constituency
are likely to change. I don't think that has ever happened before.
We've never reduced the House of Commons in size before, in terms
of number of MPs, without taking out a chunk of the UK as we did
with the Irish MPs, obviously after partition, or I think there
was another change when the university seats came out, and that
was a reduction. So reducing the number of MPs is quite a big
deal in historical terms, and I still haven't heard a convincing
rationale of why we should go for 600. I do think that number
seems arbitrary and I do think it raises issues about the balance
between Back Bench MPs and the Executive and, in light of recent
reforms of the House of Commons, I think that should be considered
in the round. So I think there are a number of issues there we
need to look at. In addition, in terms of the timetable for this
review process, two very significant things are going to happen
once the Boundary Commissions have started their work: one of
those is that we'll have the 2011 census, which will give us a
unique opportunity to look at the completeness and accuracy of
the registers in a far more thorough way than we usually can.
It happens once every 10 years. The second thing is that we're
told we're going to have an accelerated introduction of individual
registration, which we can project will have significant impact
on the number of registered electors in different constituencies
and at the levels of England, Scotland and Wales. So there is
a lot going on in this period which I feel is not being looked
at in the round, in relation to what are very big changes.
Chair: Dr Mortimore, any comments?
Dr Mortimore: Perhaps just one
point on the census. It is undoubtedly true that checking the
registers against the census is the best we can do, and it's worth
doing and should be done when it become possible, but the census
itself of course is not perfect. There are significant numbers
of people these days who don't get on the census. I think, from
memory, the official response rate was in the low 90s last time,
and there were some London authorities with under two thirds response,
even that ONS admitted—and some of those took action because
they thought they were still under counted. The census figures,
the counts that were put in each area, adjust for that and try
and get the population right, but in terms of having the perfect
list of names even the census isn't perfect, and of course the
sort of people who don't get on the census, or don't want to be
on the census is exactly the same sort of people who don't want
to get on the register. It is the best that can be done, in terms
of checking the register but it's going to be a long way short
of perfect because what you're comparing it with is also short
of perfect.
Q215 Mr Chope: I was fascinated by
Dr Wilks-Heeg's analysis of all the powers that EROs could have
to check the register, but don't necessarily use at the moment,
and I wonder whether he could put in a memorandum to us exactly
what those powers are, the source of those powers in law, and
what other powers could be used that are not yet available because
of data protection or other legislation? The other point I was
going to ask was whether he believes that we should move towards
a system of registering people as residents, because if we registered
the residents we might be able to get a more accurate relationship
between the resident population and the burden of Members of Parliament,
which I think is an argument that has been put forward against
this Bill?
Dr Wilks-Heeg: Certainly, in terms
of providing a memorandum, I would be happy to do so. Registering
residents: obviously this would be the norm in continental European
countries, where people usually have to register with somebody
when they move into an area, and most people do. It would have
a number of advantages, in terms of understanding patterns of
electoral registration eligibility, and so on. However, we also
know that this is likely to be resisted. In previous years, there
would have been concerns about the relationship of any such agenda
to the introduction of ID cards, etc. So I think at some point
we are going to have to revisit this question. Hopefully a way
can be found in which it can be sold to UK citizens in a way that
doesn't encounter so much concern and resistance. Certainly in
some European countries there are obvious benefits that you get
from registering, which is one of the reasons people would do
it, aside from the legal requirement to do so, of course.
Q216 Mr Chope: At the moment, quite
a lot of people, for example, if they want to register with their
doctor, have to establish that they have a residence; if they
want to get credit, they need to establish that they have a fixed
residence. What surprises me is that, with those increasing pressures,
we haven't seen an increase in registration as a result, even
though they are registered as electors.
Dr Wilks-Heeg: I'm not sure I
quite follow.
Mr Chope: Well, at the moment if, for
example, you want to get registered with a doctor, you need to
establish that you are living at a fixed address, and one way
of doing that is to show that you are on the electoral register.
Similarly, if you want to get a bank statement or you want to
take out a new bank account, you need to produce some evidence
that you are living at the place you say you are, and the electoral
registration is used as corroboration for that, and because of
the usefulness of the electoral registration as a corroborating
factor, I am surprised that more people are not registering.
Dr Wilks-Heeg: I see your point.
We have no research evidence on this, so this is completely speculative,
but it probably is the case that the fact that electoral registration
is used by credit reference agencies has helped keep registration
levels up from where they might have been otherwise. There is
a debate there whether the register should be used for those purposes,
but I think it probably has that effect. However, and this is
one of the things which was discussed in the Electoral Commission
report on electoral registration, it is theoretically possible—we
don't have any clear evidence—that people who might be in
debt and seeking to avoid detection from debt collection agencies
may also take themselves off the electoral roll, as they did in
relation to poll tax avoidance, and given the increasing levels
of personal debt, and people defaulting on it, this could be serving
to depress registration levels slightly in some areas. But you
would need further research on that, because it is a speculative
thing that I am advancing there.
Q217 Chair: Just to pick up on the
first point that Mr Chope raised, from my experience the personality
and the energy of the Electoral Registration Officer matters immensely,
from someone who just does what they have to do to someone who
is very committed to try to get democratic engagement. Isn't it
rather unusual that there is this sort of laissez-faire view about
one of the most important things that we have in our democracy,
which is the right to vote, and shouldn't there be a bit stronger
sense of direction from the centre to make sure there is a rather
more even and high level of capability from Electoral Registration
Officers?
Dr Wilks-Heeg: I'm not sure it's
quite fair to describe it as "laissez-faire", and certainly
the Electoral Commission I think does what it can, within the
existing legislative framework, to check what EROs are doing,
whether they're following best practice, and to follow that up
where they think there is a serious cause for concern. My feeling
is that they increasingly do follow it up where they think there
are concerns. I think the key issue is: we're bound to get variation
because we have so many Electoral Registration Officers. It's
a highly localised system, so there are clearly going to be differences.
It will partly be about how the ERO approaches the task; it will
partly be about the skills that they bring to the job and it will
partly be about how they're resourced. There is no ring-fenced
funding for EROs. Some of them are far better resourced by their
local authorities than others, and that can make a very significant
difference, particularly when it comes to this crucial thing of
personal canvassing. At that stage where the postal canvass has
not yielded a response from everybody and people go round and
knock on doors to get the forms back, if that is not being resourced
that can make quite a significant difference; maybe five, maybe
more, percentage points on the registration level.
Q218 Chair: A final one from me and
I think from the Committee as a whole. Some hold that there is
a de-politicisation going on at local level, that politics is
now conducted at the national level, often between the media and
Downing Street, at one extreme, and that the parties are more
of a hollow shell than they have ever been in terms of local activity.
We are seeing, with the local inquiries disappearing and not taking
evidence from political parties in open session, one sliver of
evidence that that might be the case, but also, if a boundary
is settled after the next round, is it not incumbent upon political
parties to keep the level of registration exactly as it is rather
than recruit extra people—which is what many parties do,
and certainly my party tries to get people on the electoral register,
which is very low in my constituency—keeping it as it is
rather than improving the levels of democratic participation,
because you would be inviting a further review of your expanded
constituency?
Dr Mortimore: I'm not sure
it's going to work like that, because each constituency isn't
viewed in isolation. If the constituency next door gets an extra
10,000 people on the register your boundary is going to have to
change as well. There is a knock-on effect through the whole system.
Q219 Chair: They won't do it either,
will they? We'll all try and go pat on "This is it, let's
try and keep the stability in the system now."
Dr Wilks-Heeg: It's an intriguing
question and I've long argued that—I think this lies partly
behind your question—the slow decline or perhaps fast decline
of political parties, in terms of canvassing at election time,
and so on, that has lost a kind of check on the registers in terms
of keeping them complete and accurate, and I think there is obviously
a danger that that could continue. Whether political parties and
candidates might pursue this as a kind of rational strategy—I
think that's quite speculative. I think it would be difficult
to know how anybody could try to manage that process. Given that
there are so many factors which impact on electoral registration,
I don't think it would be possible for local parties to try and
manipulate it in that way, so I wouldn't be particularly concerned
about that.
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