Electoral registration underpins the democratic process by providing the list of those who are eligible to vote. The registers are also used for other public purposes such as drawing electoral boundaries, selecting people to undertake jury service, for certain law enforcement and crime prevention purposes and for credit checks. Since 2004, the Electoral Commission has become the principal body in the UK undertaking research into the electoral registers and in this article we present the findings from a national study on the quality of Great Britain's electoral registers, which was funded by the Cabinet Office. We also consider what these findings tell us about how the plans to change the electoral registration system, from one of household registration to individual electoral registration, could affect the registers. The Electoral Commission supports the introduction of individual electoral registration (IER) because we believe it will address vulnerabilities in the current electoral registration process. However, this will be the biggest change to the voter registration process since the universal franchise and its implementation requires careful planning: it needs to be done in a way that put the voters first and maximises the accuracy and the completeness of the electoral registers. The Commission is now working on a research programme to support scrutiny and assessment of the impact of the changes that will occur during the transition from one system to the other.
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