SCOTLAND is the worst hit region in Britain outside London for 'missing voters' with over 230,000 at risk of disappearing because of new changes to the way we register to take part in elections, new research reveals.
They could join the missing million - a term that describes those in Scotland who are eligible to vote but missing from the register as well as those who are registered but habitually do not vote.
The number of potentially electorally disenfranchised Scots is equivalent to losing entire population of Greater Glasgow and Aberdeen from the electoral roll.
The figures from HOPE Not Hate have raised concern ahead of next year's Scottish Parliament elections.
They show that within Scotland, the biggest potential percentage hit will be in Glasgow where there is a projected 13.64 percent (67,225) drop off. In Edinburgh the potential drop off is estimated to be 6.31 percent (24,201), while in Aberdeen there would be a projected 6.13 percent (10,603) drop off.
The campaign group says the expected to be a huge ‘voter drop off’ is due to the Government’s new registration system, called Individual Electoral Registration (IER), which requires each member of the household to register themselves. Previously one person could register the rest of the household.
The Government introduced IER to make the voting system more secure, and reduce the chance of electoral fraud.
But the campaign group says councils across the UK have been unable to verify nearly 1.9m peoples' details on the electoral register, including 231,341 in Scotland so by the time the changes come in to IER on December 1, they will be removed from the register. They will join an existing near-8m people in the UK who aren't registered to vote.
London tops the UK list of potential voter drop-off with 6.9 percent potentially disappearing, with Scotland just behind with 5.48 percent.
The date for the end of the transition to IER is currently set out in law as December 2016 but the UK Government has moved the date forward by a year increasing the risk that people will not re-register.
HOPE Not Hate say that when the transition period ends, those people that local authorities have not been able to match with tax or benefit records and who have not re-registered and provided a National Insurance number will be taken off the electoral register.
They say the registers with the largest predicted drop off tend to be in large urban areas with a high incidence of multiple occupancy housing, regular home movers and large numbers of historically low propensity registering voters.
"Not giving enough time for IER to be implemented carefully furthermore makes it more difficult for many people to exercise their right to vote, a key foundation of our democracy and a fundamental human right," the campaign group said.
Nick Lowles of HNH, which is about to launch a month-long voter registration campaign said: “Yes, we are talking about potential but we should also remember that we are likely to witness a substantial drop of in students registering to vote this autumn as opposed to 12 months ago, when there was the Scottish referendum and then the General election.
"The Electoral Commission has stated that despite what councils do over the next few months - with far less money than they've had over the past 12 months to do this work - the drop off is likely to be substantial."
In Scotland official figures show that the number of electoral register entries increased considerably before the independence referendum last year, rising by 4 percent between March and September 2014 and then dropped on the publication of revised registers in March 2015, by 3 percent.
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