Bid to put 81,000 NI voters back on register
A bill to re-register 81,000 voters who have slipped off the British electoral register in Northern Ireland was being rushed through all its House of Commons stages today.
The Electoral Registration (Northern Ireland) Bill has already been debated in the House of Lords.
Opening second reading debate in the Commons today, Northern Ireland Minister John Spellar said it gave the chief electoral officer for Northern Ireland the power to re-register former electors ahead of local elections in May.
Those involved had appeared on the register published last September but failed to return the annual canvass from that year, or failed to complete it accurately, and so did not appear on the register published last December.
Mr Spellar said: “It’s important that as many electors as possible are given the opportunity to vote.
“This Bill strengthens democracy in Northern Ireland in time for the May elections.”
But Liberal Democrat spokesman Lembit Opik raised concerns that some of the 81,000 may have been “bogus voters”.
Mr Spellar said this may have been true in the past but under laws passed in 2002 there had been a “major clean-up of the register” with a requirement for voters to provide “personal identifiers”.
He said: “These people have already been verified.”
