Young People, Students Make Up The ‘Missing Million’ Voters Who Are ‘Losing Their Rights’

Ed Miliband says that the re-registering system means that young people are going to miss out come the May General Election…

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by Sophie Wilkinson |
Published on

Ahead of this year's election, voters have been required to re-register, either by post or online. This means that one million voters (950845, to be precise) have just disappeared from the electoral roll. And unless they register? They won't be able to vote.

Who does this affect the most? 'Students and renters', making up for a 'disenfranchised generation'. So, um. Hi guys.

Ed Miliband will today say that the disappearing voters is a 'scandal' and accuse the Convervatives and Liberal Democrats of not giving young people a voice, reports The Independent.

The re-registering has been introduced to combat fraud; this time around, you cannot register according to your household, you just have to register as a free agent. This means that university's halls of residence have been under no obligation to register people; places with a big student population have seen big drops in registered voters.

As for renters, well, there's a bit of confusion as to where do they bloody vote anyway? Their home constituency or the the one where they live? (Answer: it's up to you, register in whichever one you're most likely to get to a polling station in on the 7th May)

Ed's so cross about the 'missing million' and will say it's 'a direct consequence of the Government's decision to ignore warnings that rushing through new individual registration reforms would damage democracy'

'Having broken their promises on tuition fees to young people, having failed to build the economy that will work for them, having short-changed their future, this is David Cameron’s and Nick Clegg’s final insult to young people,'

'They are sitting by and watching hundreds and thousands of young people in our country lose their sacred democratic rights.'

Saying all of this in Nick Clegg's constituency ail strike a nerve, that's why Tom Brake, the Lib Dem's Deputy Commons Leader has already delivered this response: 'Labour must have forgotten it began the policy of individual electoral registration while it was in government. Instead of scaremongering, Labour should be working with its own local authorities to ensure that the large amount of money available is spent helping people, particularly students, register to vote.

'Labour also seems keen to hide the fact that the Coalition has made it extremely easy to register to vote – it can be done online in a couple of minutes.'

As this shouldn't be about political pointscoring and should just be about letting people have their choice, make sure you're able to choose come 7th May, and register to vote here: gov.uk/register-to-vote

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Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson

This article originally appeared on The Debrief.

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