The Voters List
As a general rule, a prerequisite of voting in elections is that prospective voters are recorded in
the electoral register, or the voters list. As with all general rules, however, there are exceptions.
The 1994 election in South Africa, for instance, was one of the rare occasions in which no
electoral register was used. In this case, voters could cast their ballot at any polling station. To
prevent multiple voting by individuals, voters' hands and identification documents were stamped
by electoral officials when they received a ballot.5 Such a system is very difficult to
administer, however, since it combines several electoral functions at once. The presence of the
voters list, on the other hand, allows for the separation of two of the most important functions of
the election authority -- verifying voter eligibility and controlling the legitimacy of the voting
process. In addition, the voters list can be used in voter education, and it can be provided to
political parties and candidates, to aid them in their campaigns. While the presence of a voters
list is not an absolute necessity in conducting elections, the advantages that accrue from the list
readily justify its use.
The voters list confirms that voters have met all eligibility requirements and thereby plays a
crucial role in conferring legitimacy on the electoral process. Conversely, problems with the
process of voter registration, particularly with the integrity of the voters list, can have an
immediate and negative impact on the legitimacy of the election. Voter registration, therefore,
is among the most important of all tasks of election administration.
A Costly Element of Elections
If not the single most costly element of the electoral process, voter registration is certainly one of
the most costly. One major challenge for election administrators is to ensure that eligible voters
are registered once and only once on the voters list, and that ineligible voters (such as those who
are deceased or have failed to maintain residency requirements) are removed from the list. By
the same token, another challenge is to prevent ineligible voters from registering in the first
place. This is particularly important in countries where questions of citizenship and concerns
over permeable borders exist. Meeting these requirements for a national electorate that
often numbers in the millions of eligible voters, therefore, is not only a logistical challenge but
costly in man-hours and materials.
The three basic options available for the development and maintenance of an electoral
register are a periodic list, a continuous list, and a voters list based on a civil registry:
The Periodic List
The periodic register of voters, or periodic list, is one in which the election administration
authorities devise a new voters list de novo for each new electoral event, without
intending to maintain or update this list for the future. Periodic lists often are used for only one
electoral event, and are normally, although not necessarily, created just prior to the election.
This system is relatively expensive and time-consuming, since it requires election administration
officials to come in direct contact with all eligible voters before the election. It has been
used extensively throughout Africa as well as in Canada until 1997. This method of voter
registration may be particularly useful where the election administration infrastructure is not
sufficiently developed to maintain a continuous list, where population mobility is high or where
the citizenry is averse to the maintenance of lists of citizens by the government. The periodic
list may also be preferred by quasi-governmental agencies, such as electoral bodies or
commissions.
The Continuous List
A continuous list of voters is one in which the electoral register is maintained and continually
updated by the election administration. This system requires an appropriate infrastructure to
maintain the list. Typically, this requires adding the names and other relevant information for
those who are satisfying eligibility requirements, such as citizenship, residency and voting age,
as well as deleting the names of those who no longer meet eligibility requirements, through
death, for example, or change of residency. Since the continuous list is regularly (or
continuously) updated, there is no need to conduct a final registration effort immediately
preceding an election, as is normally the case with the periodic list. In addition, the continuous
list may be maintained either locally, as in the United Kingdom, or nationally, as in Australia
and Canada.
There is considerable interest among election officials as to which of the two methods, the
periodic list or the continuous list, is less expensive and/or more cost effective. There is no
simple answer. There have been relatively few instances in which the election authority has
changed from one system to another. When Elections Canada made a shift from a periodic list
system to a continuous register, it suggested the savings would be approximately $30 million
(CDN) for each electoral event.6 The critical test of this estimate will occur during the
next federal election, which is due sometime before June 2002. It should be noted, however,
that savings achieved by changing to a continuous list in Canada are largely due to the sharing of
voter registration data between the federal and provincial levels of government. In other words,
a considerable portion of the savings result from more efficient use of information and reduced
redundancy of effort and expense, rather than from any intrinsic differences in the lists
themselves
The Civil Registry
The third option for registering voters is the civil registry. The civil registry may contain a
variety of information on all citizens, such as name, address, citizenship, age, identification
number, and other data. In a number of countries, particularly in Europe and Latin
America, the voters list is produced from information already collected through the
national civil registry. One of the big questions in countries with a civil registry is whether
the department responsible for the civil registry, often the Interior Ministry, is also responsible
for the voters list. Colombia, for example, uses a single ministry for both registries, while
most other countries separate these responsibilities between two agencies.
Once a civil registry has been created, producing a voter list becomes relatively efficient and
cost-effective. This is because the major costs are borne in the first place by the civil registry.
Furthermore, while the maintenance costs of a civil registry are relatively high, the information
recorded may be used for many other purposes, as it is in Sweden, thereby reducing the overall
costs associated with government data management.
Paradoxically, the major drawback of this system stems from its major strength. Even though
the high costs of maintaining the civil registry can often be justified because the database is
shared among other governmental agencies or departments, and used for a variety of other
purposes, issues of privacy may become controversial. Concerns may arise about the loss, or
potential loss, of privacy that ensues from widespread sharing of electronic databases on
citizens. Where these concerns are intense, the civil registry option may become simply
unacceptable, regardless of its administrative utility.
