The right of all adult citizens to participate in the affairs of their government is one of the cornerstones of democracy. Perhaps the most fundamental form of participation is voting in free, fair, and regular elections. For citizens to exercise their democratic right to vote, relevant authorities need to establish a comprehensive and inclusive voters’ list, also called a voters’ register. The list should be carefully maintained to ensure that each eligible citizen is registered to vote once and only once in an election. A voters’ list makes it possible to separate two of the most important functions of the election management authority, namely verifying voter eligibility and controlling the legitimacy of the voting process. The list may also be used for several purposes such as in voter education, and should be provided to political parties and candidates to aid them in their campaigns. While elections may proceed without it, a voters’ list offers advantages that readily justify its use.
By confirming that voters have met all eligibility requirements, the voters’ list helps confer legitimacy on the electoral process. Conversely, the legitimacy of the process will immediately be called into question if there are problems with the registration of voters, and particularly with the integrity of the voters’ list. Voter registration, therefore, is one of the most important tasks of election administration.
High Cost of Voter Registration
Voter registration is both the most central and most expensive aspect of the electoral process. The task of registering voters and producing voters’ lists often accounts for more than 50 percent of the overall cost of administering elections. Various factors affect these costs, including the type of system used to register voters, the administrative capacity of the election management authority, and the country’s social, economic and demographic characteristics.
Political Equality and Inclusiveness
Voters’ lists support democratic principles by fostering political equality for all citizens and actively promoting the inclusion of eligible voters in the election process. Differences arise over how much effort election management authorities would require to register voters from groups that historically have lower-than-average levels of registration and voter turnout. These include: women, members of visible and ethnic minorities, youth and first time voters,the poor, the homeless, people with a disability, prisoners, voters in hospitals, and the elderly. Some countries try to develop focused and targeted registration campaigns to increase the participation of these groups. Other countries take a more passive approach. Officials make it equally possible for all individuals to register and vote, but do not specifically seek to increase the registration of any particular group.
Despite these differences, there is consensus that for a system to be considered democratic and representative, it must provide equal opportunity for everyone to participate in an inclusive voter registration process.
Legal and Administrative Exclusion
Voters may be excluded from a voters’ list through either legal or administrative means. In the representative democracies that emerged in Western countries during the 18th and 19th centuries, people’s eligibility to register and vote was determined according to criteria such as property ownership, wealth, literacy, race, gender and “moral fitness.” Anyone not meeting the criteria was excluded. These legal exclusions were gradually removed and today most are no longer viewed as legitimate. However, many countries still legally exclude people on the basis of age, (Several countries around the world [1] have set the minimum voting age at 18, although the age requirement is sometimes lower, as in Indonesia where people younger than 17 are allowed to vote provided that they are married or have been married once [2]. The voting age is higher in certain countries. For example, Italy has gone as far as setting the minimum age at 25 years for the election of Senators [3]. Citizenship, residence, conviction of a criminal offense or mental incompetence are also used to illegally exclude people [4]. The military has also been excluded from voter registration and voting in certain countries, in an attempt to ensure neutrality of this group of voters [5]. The exclusions are usually written into a country’s constitution or electoral law by political leaders and have then to be adopted by administrative officials.
Administrative exclusion involves excluding people who are ostensibly eligible to vote. They may be excluded simply by personal choice or habit. For example, potential voters may not wish to register because they have little or no interest in politics or the election. A voter may be incorrectly registered, or not registered at all because of a change of address or a change of name. Exclusion may also be the result of shortcomings of the voter registration system, such as insufficient efforts to publicize the deadline for completing the registration process. A proper registration system seeks to prevent, or at least minimize, the exclusion of eligible voters. The priority should be to register all eligible voters. In practice, this cannot be fully achieved, but it should provide the impetus for setting very clear performance criteria by which to measure success in approaching universal registration.
Complexity of Voter Registration
In making decisions about voter registration, electoral administrators must take into account conditions in their country, state or region. Among the questions that they face are:
- Should a new voters’ list be created for each election or is it better to maintain an ongoing list?
- Provided that a country has a reliable civil registry should the voters’ list be generated from it?
- How do eligible voters identify themselves as such at the voting station? Do they use a voter identification card or some other means such as the national identification (ID) card?
- If a voter identification card is used, what information must be on the card?
- Should registration be compulsory or voluntary?
- If registration is voluntary, should it be at the initiative of the citizen or the state?
- How should local conditions (e.g. literacy rates, urbanisation, population mobility, relative affluence, history with democracy) affect the choice of a voter registration system?
- What role does computerisation play in the voter registration process? What aspects of the process are best handled by computer? What are the advantages and disadvantages of computerisation?
- What is the role of other technologies in the voter registration process? How can it enhance the voter registration process? What are the advantages and disadvantages of such technologies?
The answers to these and similar questions will help determine the kind of voter registration system best suited to a particular political context.
Three Options for Voter Registration
Democracy in general, and voter registration in particular, may take many forms. In deciding how to give substance to the principles of electoral democracy, it is important to choose a system that is:
- most responsive to local conditions
- realistic and affordable given the financial and administrative environment in which it must be developed and sustained
In the case of voter registration, there are three options:
- A periodic list
- A continuous register or list
- A civil registry
The election management authority must choose one of these, or a combination, as the basis on which to design a voter registration system.
Periodic List
A periodic register of voters, or periodic list, is established for a specific electoral process and produced anew for each election. Electoral administrators do not intend to maintain or update the list for future use. Normally, the list is drawn up immediately before the election, although this need not be the case. This system is relatively expensive and time-consuming since it requires direct contact with all eligible voters before the election. It may be particularly useful where infrastructure is lacking to maintain a continuous list, where population mobility is high or where there is opposition to the maintenance of lists of citizens by the government. The periodic list may also be preferred by quasi-governmental agencies, such as electoral management bodies or commissions. This system was used for example in Malawi for the 2014 Presidential, Parliamentary and Local Council elections [6].
Continuous List
A continuous list of voters is maintained and regularly updated by the electoral administration and is a list of current eligible voters. This system depends on an appropriate infrastructure to maintain the list. Maintenance typically involves adding the names and other relevant information of people who satisfy eligibility requirements, updating details of eligible voters who are on the voters’ list and deleting the names of those who no longer meet the requirements (e.g. through death or change of residence). Since the continuous list is updated on a regular basis, there is no need for a final registration drive immediately before an election, although a period is often designated for revising the list during the election campaign. The continuous list may be maintained either locally or nationally. A continuous list is kept current because it is updated on a regular basis. The cost of registering voters is spread over the entire period between elections, so it is likely to be less costly than other systems of registration.
To facilitate list updates, many election management authorities form data-sharing partnerships with other government bodies like in Argentina, Australia [7], Canada [8] and France [9]. For example, when citizens change their place of residence, they may inform the tax bureau, the post office, the housing authority or the health system. In many countries with a continuous register, partnerships allow the election management authority to receive regular updates of changes to these bodies’ files. This makes it possible to update the electoral register without any direct contact between the voter and the election management authority. The federal agency in charge of maintaining the national population register and issuing national ID cards in Argentina sends local election management authorities the names of 16 year old citizens who reside within their voting districts [10]. The local election management authorities add these individuals to the national voters’ register. In some cases, on learning about a change of address, the election management authority may send the voter a new voter registration card with a request to update and confirm the information that appears on it. Having updated information may rely on the voter to ensure that this information is sent to the relevant authorities.
Civil Registry
A third option for registering voters is the civil registry. This may contain a variety of information on all citizens, such as name, address, citizenship, age and identification number. In certain countries, particularly in Europe (Norway, Germany, Spain) and Latin America (Argentina and Peru), the voters’ list is produced from information contained in the national civil registry [11]. In countries with a civil registry, a major question is whether the body responsible for it (often the interior ministry) should be responsible for the voters’ list. Some countries give the same institution responsibility for both registries, while others choose two agencies, each with responsibility for one of the lists.
If a civil registry is in place, producing a voters’ list is relatively efficient and cost-effective because the major costs are borne in the first place by the body responsible for the civil registry. While it is relatively expensive to maintain a civil registry, the information recorded may be used for multiple purposes, reducing the government’s overall data management costs.
The major drawback of this system is the great level of power it gives to the state. Even though the high cost is justified, data sharing among government institutions may give rise to controversy. Concerns may be expressed about the loss, or potential loss of privacy. If the concerns are widespread, a civil registry may be simply unacceptable despite its usefulness.
[5] For example, up to 2014, members of the armed forces were disqualified from voting in Tunisia, Oman, Kuwait, Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia and Dominican Republic. See more at: http://www.ipu.org/parline-e/mod-electoral.asp
[6] European Union Election Observation Mission, Final Report on the Presidential, Parliamentary and Local Council Elections held in Malawi, on 20 May 2014, p. 16 - 17. See more at: http://www.eueom.eu/files/pressreleases/english/EUEOMMALAWI2014_FinalReport.pdf
[7] The Australian Electoral Commission provides electoral roll and geographic products to a range of federal government authorities, private organisations, medical researchers and members of the public subject to legislative entitlements. See more at: http://www.aec.gov.au/About_AEC/AEC_Services/roll.htm
[8] The National Register of Electors is updated continually with information from the Canada Revenue Agency, the Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the National Defense, the Provincial and territorial driver's licence agencies, the Provincial and territorial vital statistics agencies, etc. See more at: http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=reg/des&document=index&lang=e
[9] Electoral Code: "Code électoral/Partie réglementaire", article r16. Available at: http://aceproject.org/ero-en/regions/europe/FR/france-code-electoral-francais-2012/at_download/file
[10] Electoral Code: "Código Electoral Nacional", article 17. Available at: http://www.elecciones.gov.ar/normativa/archivos/codigo_electoral_nacional_19945.pdf
[11] Data extracted from ongoing survey by International IDEA on the Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Electoral Processes.
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Re-Launching of Public Identification Hearings in Côte d'Ivoire by United Nations Photo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic License.
