Equal Representation

Turnout in the 12th District ranges from 71% in the Highfield ward to 34% in Ashcroft. The gap is not a mystery and it is not a matter of enthusiasm. It is a matter of six polling stations for eleven thousand people, a register that purges more aggressively than the law requires, and forms that assume a fixed address.

What we found

The campaign’s registration audit, run with volunteers across four weekends in 2024, checked 2,300 households against the published register.

• 19% of eligible adults in Ashcroft were not registered at all.
• 7% were registered at a previous address inside the same ward.
• Of those unregistered, two thirds believed they already were.

That last figure is the important one. The problem is not persuasion. It is administration, and administration is something a council can fix.

Three changes

1. Automatic registration on any council interaction. If you renew a permit, apply for a school place or report a repair, the register is updated unless you opt out.
2. A polling station within a mile of every household. Ashcroft needs four more. They cost less than the district spends annually on printing.
3. An annual public report on registration by ward, so the gap is a number somebody has to answer for rather than a thing everyone knows.

Why this is a movement and not a policy

None of it survives one administration unless people outside the council are counting too. The audit was volunteer work. So is the door-knocking that follows it, and so is the checking afterwards. That is the movement: a few hundred people who have agreed to keep counting.