There are three general types of voter registration:

• periodic list
• continuous register or list
• civil registry

Each has strengths and weaknesses, and no type is best for all countries and circumstances. It is important to choose the system that is most suitable for the context in which it will be administered.

The periodic list is simplest in many respects. A new list of eligible voters is generated for each electoral event, and there is no need to maintain it as current, accurate or complete beyond that event. Consequently, the periodic list requires minimal ongoing administrative support between elections. To create the list, however, involves a major effort by the election authority in the period leading up to an election, often using temporary personnel.

The continuous register or list builds on previous registration efforts, with the aim of maintaining a list updated regularly. This involves significant ongoing administrative effort. The result is that the election authority will need a larger staff throughout the electoral cycle (that is, the full period from one election to the next). Updating necessitates tracking population changes: citizens who have reached voting age; deaths; people who have lost the right to vote because they were convicted of a criminal offence; or changes of address. Many jurisdictions have no formal or legal requirement for citizens to report a change in status to the election authority within a specified time. To obtain the information it needs for updating entries in a continuous list, the authority typically seeks data-sharing agreements with other government ministries or public agencies, such as driver’s licence bureaus (motor vehicle registers), tax departments and the post office. Updates through data sharing are facilitated if each citizen is assigned and uses a citizen identification number; without that, it can be difficult to match files.

Even greater administrative effort is required for a civil registry. This is a population register that includes the name and other identifying characteristics of citizens, such as the citizen identification number, date of birth, address and gender. It is used for various public purposes. One of these is to generate a voters list for elections. The civil registry is maintained by authorities other than election authorities – perhaps the taxation department. Citizens must keep their information up to date in the registry in order to continue receiving various social benefits, including education, health care and employment benefits. The election authority plays little or no role in updating the voters list, simply receiving this database from the body in charge of the civil registry. This gives the election authority much less responsibility and control over the quality of the list than it would have if it maintained a continuous register.