Marked Registers

The way a voter casts their vote is secret and election law makes it plain that attempting to discover what someone has marked on their ballot paper is a serious offence.In contrast, whether or not someone has voted is a matter of public record and we have a right to inspect that record in the 12 months after an election.  This is very useful information that can help us use our limited resources more effectively. 

What happens is the presiding officer has a copy of the elector roll for the area covered Polling Station. This is often referred to as the "Station Register" When a ballot paper is issued, the officer makes a mark on the station register against the voter's name. This ensures each voter is only given one ballot paper. After the election these lists are made available for inspection and copies may be purchased. 

Absent Voters, mainly postal voters, are recorded differently,. As part of the checking procedures, returned Absent Voter ballots are recorded in a database. This data can be purchased.

How can we use Marked Register Information?

Marked register data can be used to target our campaign efforts on those voters who have recently voted.

We can obtain the lists of who voted for up to 12 months after an election, and then we can enter that data into the Connect campaigning database.  We use that information when we create the lists of people to canvass or deliver targeted literature to. As well as being a more efficient use of our time, canvassing known voters is generally a more positive experience; conversely calling on people who didn't vote and are not interested can be less motivating for our people.

The practical steps involved and what to ask for

Your local council should be able to give you access to the marked register files for up to 12 months after an election. You can make an appointment to go to the council offices and inspect the registers. Generally you are permitted to make notes on paper or on a computer of who voted. There will be no charge for this.

Generally though we choose to purchase copies of the registers for us to process when it is convenient to us. There is a prescribed charge for this. For the station registers we want to purchase PDF files of the station registers; we avoid buying paper copies because (a) the price is twice that for data files and (b) because the paper copies miust be securely destroyed after use. Ask the council for a quote - you might expect it to be of the order of £200 - £300

Priorities

Ideally we should try to purchase the marked registers for the whole of our area (in our case the whole London Borough) and for every election. We cannot predict what by-elections might crop up in the future where this information could be vitally useful. 12 months after the election, the council must destroy all this valuable data and so will no longer be available to buy at a later date. If however funds simply will not stretch then you will need to prioritise. Because turnout is lower in local council and London Assembly elections, data for these elections is the highest priority as this indicates the most committed voters. General Election data in areas where you are only targetting one council ward is low priority. You can choose to only obtain data for your target wards but do consider the risk that another ward might hold a future by-election.

Processing the data

Connect is the place to store all campaigning data - however the marked register data needs some work to get it into the system. There are ways to do this manually but there is also an online electronic scanning system produced by our Volunteers in Liberal Software which is called REGISTR - you can also read a simplified explanation there.  You can