The Government should take enforcement action against electoral registration officers (EROs) who fail to order house-to-house canvassing enquiries to increase levels of voter registration, a panel of MPs has recommended. A report issued last week by the House of Commons' political and constitutional reform committee said 22 local authorities failed to fulfil this statutory requirement for the previous canvass - some for a number of years. The chief executives of East Devon DC and Mid Devon DC, Mark Williams and Kevin Finan, gave evidence to the committee last month to justify alternative systems for registering voters in rural areas, where voter-registration is more time-consuming and resource intensive. But in the run up to next year's general election and amid radical changes in voter registration through the Individual Electoral Registration (IER) programme, the MPs urged greater rigour from EROs to drive greater representation from an estimated 7.5m people not correctly registered at present.
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