Voter Registration

Topic IndexCivil Register - Advantages

The civil registry offers a number of advantages:

There is relatively little cost involved in collecting data for voter registration because the key information has already been collected and compiled for the civil registry. To a large extent, another government agency simply assumes the costs in place of the electoral administration. Costs are quite high but the share borne by the election management authority is small;
As with a continuous list, the information in a civil registry normally is updated regularly, making it possible to produce a current voters’ list on short notice;
Again as with a continuous list, the costs of maintaining a civil registry are spread across the years;
Governments that use a civil registry typically place a very high priority on ensuring that it provides reliable, up-to-date information. Voters’ lists produced from such registries score well on the three performance criteria of currency, accuracy and completeness;
Because civil registries are used for a variety of administrative purposes, citizens are generally given a short time frame for reporting changes to their personal information. As a result, while any ongoing registry system has a delay in integrating changes, it tends to be rather short for civil registries and these systems perform well on the criterion of currency;
Because the civil registry is updated regularly, it allows significant lead time for confirming the accuracy of the information;
All citizens are usually required to be listed in the civil registry, and not being listed has been described as an equivalent to social death. A citizen that isn't in the registry may not have access to a wide variety of social services, such as employment or unemployment benefits, health care support and education. For this reason, civil registry systems tend to perform very well on the criterion of completeness; and
The civil registry can be used as the basis for a list of clients of any government service. With appropriate privacy safeguards (like those adopted in Sweden), even the private-sector organisations could have access to the data and avoid the costs of maintaining their own client lists. The registry allows possible overall efficiencies in governance.

Personal tools

ELECTORAL FRAMEWORK

ELECTORAL PARTICIPATION

ELECTORAL MANAGEMENT

ELECTORAL INTEGRITY

ELECTORAL OPERATIONS

Voter Registration