Supplementary written evidence submitted by Bite the Ballot (VUK 153)

 

Since Bite The Ballot’s (BTB) appearance before the Committee on Thursday 3rd April 2014, when Bite The Ballot’s Managing Director (Michael Sani) and Policy Co-ordinator (Oliver Sidorczuk) gave oral evidence about the success of the inaugural National Voter Registration Day, ‘NVRD’ is now being held up and championed as 'best practice' right across the spectrum, and namely, by the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills who approached BTB in the aftermath of NVRD 2014's success.

Ofsted have now since evaluated BTB's democracy education work 'in action' and will now actively promote our resources (via their ‘best practice’ report) to all state schools and colleges, encouraging them to run engaging voter registration activities in the week of NVRD 2015.

The combination of the success of our face-to-face schools outreach programme – ‘The Basics’ - and the impact of NVRD 2014 encouraged us to use our expertise (and these two case studies) in seeking to reform the law around voter registration.

We therefore used the educational outreach and NVRD activities as evidential case studies to refine the content of our Voter Registration Bill. The Bill, in sum, has two keys aims in revolutionising the UK’s system of democratic engagement:

  1. it will empower Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) to take active steps to increase the shockingly low numbers of young, disabled or ethnic minority people on the register (i.e. ‘under-represented groups’) - this includes organising at least one voter engagement session per year, per school or college; and,
  2. it will allow people to simply tick a box asking to be registered when filling in forms such as applying for a passport or driving license - making registering to vote easy, simple and painless.

The Bill (Voter Registration Bill [HL] 2014-15) has been introduced in the House of Lords and is awaiting a second reading debate allocation. It is also soon to be introduced in the House of Commons by way of a Ten Minute Rule Bill avenue, though we also recently attempted to persuade MPs (via an online petition) successful in the 2014-15 Private Member’s Bill ballot to introduce it via their slot.

We are currently amending the Wales Bill along the same lines, but with exclusive applicability to Wales. An amendment has been tabled in advance of committee stage in the House of Lords by (APPG on Voter Registration member) Lord Roberts of Llandudno.

Finally, we also attempted to introduce the provisions of the Bill via secondary legislation, drafting our own Regulations, commissioning a written opinion from a legislative lawyer and attempting to amend related, draft Regulations as they passed through the Houses of Parliament. The then draft Regulations (Representation of the People (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2014) were regretted in the House of Lords by (APPG chair) Lord Kennedy of Southwark (HL Deb, 12 May 2014, c1735).

Building on both this, and our grassroots work in local communities, we have developed a series of manifesto recommendations. These are three fold:

  1. EASY REGISTRATION
    1. Voter registration in all educational establishments
    2. Introduce the proven and successful Northern Ireland 'Schools Initiative' (which empowers registration officers to visit schools and colleges to undertake registration activities) across Great Britain (supported by Electoral Commission, Chief Electoral Officer in Northern Ireland, Electoral Reform Society, British Youth Council, Unlock Democracy)

...which goes hand in hand with

  1. ENGAGING REGISTRATION
    1. Active, inspirational citizenship education on every school and colleges’ curricula
    2. Reinvigorate citizenship education and encourage schools to become ‘democracy champions’
    3. Revitalise initial teacher training and continued professional development to engage educators and leaders alike in citizenship (supported by OFSTED, Citizenship Foundation, Political Studies Association)

...guaranteed by

  1. ACCESSIBLE REGISTRATION
    1. Sign-posted and eye-catching opportunities to register to vote when citizens interact with government, agencies and the private sector; both on- and offline
    2. Use passport, driving licence, UCAS, library and Students Loan Company applications, as well as National Insurance number card notifications, Ofsted’s online 'Learner View', GPs’ surgery enrolment etc. as avenues to register
    3. Emulating the success of the USA ‘motor-voter’ legislation (National Voter Registration Act of 1993) and the UK NHS organ donor register

5 September 2014