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Over four million residents of voting age in the UK are unable to vote due to a messy patchwork of rules about which non-Brits can vote in our elections.
A new research report commissioned by the campaign group Migrant Democracy Project exposes the extent to which migrant residents remain disenfranchised – unable to vote – in the UK.
The results are “astounding” according to the non-profit Migrant Democracy Project. The analysis found that 4.4 million residents remain ineligible to vote in parliamentary elections for MPs across the UK.
Even for local elections, where rules are less strict, 1.2 million residents of voting age remain ineligible to vote in local elections in England and Northern Ireland due to rules on which countries’ citizens can vote here. The rules apply regardless of how long they have lived and paid taxes in the UK.
London appears most affected by high numbers of non-voting residents, particularly parts of Westminster, as well as Tottenham (North), West Ham, Poplar and Limehouse (East), and Brent (West) . The capital would likely gain more seats in Parliament, if MP boundaries were tweaked to represent the hundreds of thousands of currently unrepresented potential voters.
Areas like Peterborough, Cambridge, Luton, Leicester, and parts of Birmingham would also likely gain representation if the rules were changed to expand the franchise.
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In Scotland and Wales, 88,000 residents have gained the right to vote in recent years through reforms pursued by their devolved governments, though relatively large numbers remain unable to vote in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
The report – conducted by Professor Toby James and Jamie Underwood from the University of East Anglia – is the first of its kind to pinpoint the magnitude of this disenfranchisement, according to the study’s backers.
‘What if Everyone Could Vote?’ reveals “gross disparities” between communities, with the top ten constituencies having more than 20,000 d