Around 200 students in Cardiff expect to miss this week’s election due to registration errors.
Cardiff Council unable to reach incomplete applications
Cardiff Council confirmed that around 200 students denied access to vote in this week’s general election due to registration errors.
Students appeal that no notice during registration about the lacking details on their forms – like specific details such as room numbers in the addresses – that made the application invalid.
The Council tried to contact voters with registration errors in time for Thursday’s deadline, but still, 200 people left uncontacted due to incomplete addresses and contact information in their applications.
The majority of the affected that will not be allowed to vote are young students in a student accommodation facility within Cardiff.
An appeal to reinstate voters registration
The National Union of Students (NUS) is asking the Council to process the affected student’s application in the electoral register before the deadline which unfortunately passed today.
The Council should not reason out this mistake. It is unacceptable.
A student from the University of South Wales only found out of her failed application two days ago when she contacted the Council.
I inputted my postal code on the registration website and selected my address from the list provided. There was no prompt that there was missing information upon completion.
Council defends registration site
According to the spokesperson for Cardiff Council:
The national electoral registration website (gov.uk) allows registrants to input their addresses manually in the system. Unfortunately, some voters living in student accommodations failed to provide complete addresses.
Without a full and accurate address consisting of room numbers, street location, and building floors, it would be impossible to register them into the system successfully.
The site sends out a confirmation message regardless if the information is valid or invalid.
It is the responsibility of the voter to register validly; it is not for the Election Officer to follow up invalid applications.
The number of invalid applications was around 1000 respondents; the Council managed to contact about 800 people and was successfully registered.
Some have responded, disregarded our notice, some not entertained due to the high volume of queries, and some were not able to contact due to missing and invalid applications.
Featured image by Allianz
