Tomorrow is your last chance to register to vote for the General Election. The process takes less than five minutes and you can do it online by going to: https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote
Even if you choose not to vote, registration means that you always have the choice and it’s the only way anyone would know if you hadn’t voted. Beyond that it has a number of other benefits, including that the electoral register is often used by companies undertaking credit checks with non-registration counting against people and levels of registration have been used as part of decisions over public spending, meaning areas with lower registraion-levels lose out.
While we do not know which way people vote, political parties do know if you turned out to vote and it does influence political decisions. If you want to know why services for young adults are always the first thing to be cut and services for pensions the last, have a look at their relative turnouts. Even if you decide to spoil your ballot, not going to vote is the best signal you can send to political parties that your opinions really aren’t worth listening to.
If you want to do something about that, there are two ways of voting:
- Firstly, you can join the increasing numbers who vote by post (including myself), by going to https://www.gov.uk/apply-postal-vote to download a form (a signed copy needs to be returned to the council by 5pm on 19th June, so make sure to apply early).
- Alternatively, you can go to your local polling station on the day (4th July) and cast your vote in person (go to https://iwillvote.org.uk to check where your local polling station is). From this year, everyone will need photo ID to be able to vote a list of acceptable ID can be found here and you can apply for a free Voter Authority Certificate using this link any time before 5pm on the 26th June.
Peter Lamb for Crawley 