Interesting Links for 05-06-2016

[andrewducker]

National borders exist to pen poor people into reservations of poverty (tags: globalization inequality immigration economics ) Corbyn reveals the real reason he's been so 'silent' on Brexit (tags: europe media labour politics ) Stop Explaining Yourself. (Or: It is ok to not do things because you don't want to) (tags: advice life friendship ) 12

Comments

[kalimac]

I don't have time to listen to Corbyn's entire speech right now, but I caught the beginning, and noted that he starts by asking people to register to vote. I thought registration was automatic in the UK. Has that never been so, or has it changed?

Also, his first example of how EU regulation has helped the UK: no longer pumping raw sewage into the sea. You know who still does that, the only place anywhere near here that does? Victoria, B.C.

Regarding helping people, what I hate is that when, after you agree to do something, the asker adds some condition that makes it much more difficult to do.

[andrewducker]

I don't believe that the UK has ever had automatic registration - I'm not sure what lists they'd work from to do so.

We recently moved from residence-based registration to individual registration. The idea being that this would get rid of a bunch of corruption around it. But, of course, a lot of people haven't gotten around to registering, and students, etc. are particularly bad for that.

[kalimac]

I've seen plenty of references in historical accounts of politics (covering the mid-20C, mostly) to the annual voter rolls, though I don't remember the actual term offhand. They came out once a year, you could only vote if you were on them, and especially in times of mass shiftings of population, like wartime, whether an election was held before or after the roll came out made a big difference

[andrewducker]

Looks like historically speaking it was different, but the current and previous process is fairly accurate from my understanding:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_registration_in_the_United_Kingdom#Individual_Electoral_Registration

[danieldwilliam]

Calls for people to register are not uncommon and getting more common. Partly driven by Individual Voter Registration.

I think it was more common for it to be part of the Get Out The Vote operation a few decades ago.

[steer]

So it's a funny old system really. The local authority has a duty to maintain a registration of people who would vote. In practice though they used to plop cards through the door for the "head of the household" asking to confirm who is registered to vote. This changed recently to be individuals who register. Supposedly it is a fineable offence to fail to register.

In the end though people drop off the register -- move house a lot, want to keep their head down etc. Some estimates as much as 15% of eligible population are not registered.