Voter Registration

Topic IndexContinuous Register- Disadvantages

The continuous list has a number of disadvantages:

The election management authority needs a larger number of permanent staff than it would with a periodic list. It will therefore need a larger budget;
Many permanent employees of the election management authority will be required to have advanced skills and training. They are likely to need ongoing professional development;
More employees and more skills may equal into a more professional approach to election management. However, staff size and professionalism will have budget implications. The continuous register flattens the cost spike but may not make voter registration less expensive overall. Instead it spreads the costs throughout the electoral cycle;
The election management authority needs staff to have technical expertise, particularly computer hardware and software skills, to maintain and continually update information;
Citizens must comply with requests to provide information updates.The election management authority should have an effective and efficient information-sharing arrangements with other agencies. Otherwise the number of revisions could be excessive in the final stage of list preparation;
The election management authority must diligently maintain the accuracy of the list. Serious problems have arisen in countries where maintenance of the register of voters lagged or had been sloppy. Buildup of deadwood on a continuous list represents a potential electoral fraud or, at least, an administrative scandal waiting to happen;
Diligence is also crucial in ensuring the integrity of the voters’ list. In many jurisdictions, citizens are sensitive about any sharing of their personal information among different government bodies. In collecting information and updating it for a continuous register, the election management authority must accept responsibility for assuring the security of all the information. If it fails to meet that responsibility, its reputation as an independent and professional organisation may suffer;
Updating often requires extensive cooperation between different branches of government. This is possible only with an appropriate administrative structure and culture;
With a continuous register, demographic changes of a staggering order must be identified and tracked. By some estimates, between 20 and 25 percent of people in large urban centres move every year. Some 2 to 4 percent of the electorate will reach voting age during the year and a similar percentage will die or cease to be eligible to vote. Given the cumulative change over the four- or five-year period of a typical electoral cycle, it is a daunting task to keep a continuous list up to date. Fortunately, the demographic changes are not random. They can be tracked by targeting certain portions of the electorate for greater attention;
With all continuous voter registration systems, there is a gap between the time when a change occurs and the time when it is recorded in the voters’ list. The gap is relatively long for some updating methods, which results in the voters’ list being weak in terms of currency. A solution to this problem is to allow registration on Election Day as in Canada. This can effectively eliminate concerns about currency since all voters have the opportunity to bring their registration information up to date at the elections. But there are disadvantages:
At the same time as one purpose of having a voters’ list in the first place is to separate the function of verifying voter eligibility from actual voting,if large numbers of voters register at the polls, this undermines the utility of the register and may dramatically increase the time it takes to vote; and
Another issue is how voters prove their identity. If registration occurs at the voting station, there must be a very high level of certainty that the voter is who he or she claims to be, and meets all eligibility requirements. This is why EMBs either introduce computerised voter registration, for example using the biometric system of registration and/or require voters to use some form of identification or voters’ card when voting.

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Voter Registration