Local councils to blame for the poor state of electoral register

THE state of our electoral register is in the first instance a serious indictment of local government administration in this country.

Many of our local authorities have proved singularly incompetent at doing what should be a relatively straightforward task — finding out who lives in each house or apartment in their area and registering them, and only them, to vote.

While the extent of the problem has been overstated in the recently published ad hoc surveys, the fact that there are large discrepancies in our electoral role is now beyond dispute. For that failure local government officials must take the primary responsibility.