Labour call for action on electoral register ‘mess’

THE Labour Party has urged a series of measures to address what it calls the “mess” of the electoral register after discovering one of its own TDs was deleted from the records.

Deputy Jack Wall was among an estimated 600,000 people removed from the register in recent weeks as the Government attempts to eradicate duplications and update voting records.

Labour leader Pat Rabbitte said, however, that many of the wrong people — including his Dáil colleague in Kildare — had been removed in recent weeks simply because they failed to meet a deadline to confirm their inclusion.

Mr Rabbitte said there would be a lot of anger on polling day when people discovered they had been deleted.

“Third World countries bring in the UN to make sure that their polling system is fair while we are boasting about how wealthy we are and we can’t compile a basic register,” he told the Dáil. “There are credit companies that have more accurate records of the citizenry than does the electoral register.”

Among the measures proposed by the party are an extension of the deadline for reinstatement to the register beyond its current date of November 25, plus an extensive publicity campaign to make people aware that they may have lost their voting rights.

Mr Rabbitte said anybody who had been removed from the register should receive a written notification with details of the procedures they need to follow to get on to the supplementary register that will be compiled next year.

He also called for a helpline to be set up to allow people check whether they were on the register. Deputy Rabbitte suggested extra resources should be made available to the local authorities for updating records in their own areas.

He noted that just 1,500 local authority staff were involved in revising the register when 5,000 people had been employed to conduct the census on the same door-to-door basis.

Mr Rabbitte said an electoral commission should be set up to take responsibility out of the hands of the Department of the Environment.

Finance minister Brian Cowen rejected Labour’s criticisms, saying the Government was taking the matter seriously. “We have a mobile population with about 100,000 changing address every year, 90,000 new homes built in a year, second homes, family breakdown, separation etc — all of that has complicated things,” he said.

He said provisions for inclusion on the supplementary register were flexible enough and said people who discovered they were deleted from the register once it was compiled next year would be able to add their name to the supplementary register up to 15 days before the general election.