Voter Registration

Topic IndexDisadvantages

The disadvantages of a civil registry include the following:

It is a very costly system to establish and maintain. Although the voters list itself is readily generated from the registry, considerable resources need to be expended to maintain this registry. However, if the government has decided, for reasons that typically have little to do with elections, to maintain a civil registry, then it is a logical application of its efforts to use the information in the compilation of a voters list.

Care must be exercised in maintaining the data needed for the management of elections and the production of the voters list in civil registry databases. A system must be in place to ensure that when a name is added to the database, the database assigns the person to the correct administrative division.

In some countries, the maintenance of a civil registry is associated with notions of an Orwellian 'big brother.' Thus, there is an aversion to the creation of such a registry.

Similarly, there is a fear in some instances of the inappropriate use of centralized databases, such as a civil registry. The fear is that the data could be used for unauthorized commercial purposes, or that there are insufficient limits on the exchange of the data across governmental units.

A civil registry makes the election authority dependent on the government for the voter list. If the electorate is skeptical of the government, then that skepticism will be transferred to the voters list. If the ministry responsible for maintaining the civil registry is either unwilling or unable to keep it accurate, current, or complete to acceptable, pre-determined standards, then the election authority is forced to start with poor data in creating the voters list.

If a civil registry is used for a voters list, there is a need to have these lists maintained either in the same government department (the system used in Colombia), or in separate departments with considerable communication between them.⁵¹