Characteristics of the Periodic List
A periodic list is a voters list that is produced anew for each election. Thus, it is a voters list that is
developed for occasional use, rather than an ongoing list. There is no attempt between elections to
update or otherwise adjust the list. It is produced in the period immediately preceding the election,
normally within a relatively short time frame. The closer to the election that the list is produced,
the greater its currency, at least with respect to the eligibility and residence of voters. When the
periodic list is used for elections in Westminister-style parliamentary elections (such as Canada up
to the early 1990s), the list is devised during the election campaign (i.e., after parliament has been
dissolved and the writs for the elections had been issued).
In the Canadian federal election of 1997, the electoral administration, Elections Canada, moved
toward the adoption of a continuous list of voters, and thus the enumeration occurred in the
months before the start of the election campaign. On the other hand, Britain has a
Westminister-style system but does not wait until the campaign begins to create the voters list.
Instead, there is an annual update campaign and then the list is effectively closed until the next
annual update. Some have called this a permanent list with periodic updates.
In non-Westminister systems, in which elections occur on predetermined dates, the list can be
developed before the official start of the campaign. The latter scenario provides a longer time
frame for the development of the preliminary list (see Production of Preliminary Voters List) and the final list (see Definitions,
Introduction).
Because a periodic list requires the registration of all voters in a relatively short period of time, it
requires substantial resources in terms of both time and money clustered at the time at which
registration occurs. With a continuous list, the costs are spread out over a longer period of time.
In the language of election administrators, the development of a periodic list has significant cost
spikes. In Ghana, for example, the construction of a periodic list required a supply of twenty
thousand registration centres staffed by sixty thousand trained workers.48
