On Thursday local elections will take place in many parts of the country. Local government and the vital public services they provide have been hollowed out by nine years of Tory cuts that have hit the poorest hardest. Voters will have a clear choice between the Tories, who offer more of the same failed austerity and cuts, or Labour, who will rebuild our country with investment in services and communities so they can thrive once again.
It is vital that we elect as many Labour Councillors as possible on 2 May to send a message to this Government that real change is needed and austerity must end. Sadly, those who missed the voter registration deadline last month will not be able to have their say on polling day because of the complicated and bureaucratic way we currently register to vote.
The Conservative Government believes that voting and registering to vote is a personal responsibility and under the system of individual electoral registration (IER), everyone has to register to vote online individually. The move away from household to individual registration in 2014, where one resident could sign everyone up to vote, was a huge change to the way we do elections. However, IER has not achieved what we were told it would and the additional burden for voters has affected registration rates and consequently voter turnout.
