Tuesday 15 April 2014

Are you registered to vote?

WF Election Info



Dear Adrian,

Are you registered to vote in the elections on 22nd May? Are your neighbours? Chances are at least some of them are not.

Does this even matter? After all, our democracy has huge problems. 38 Degrees made this clear two weeks ago when we told MPs that a huge reason people don’t vote is a lack of trust in politicians and parties. No wonder many people feel voting is pointless. [1]

But for those politicians who find it easier to ignore their constituents, this isn’t a problem. In fact, people not voting makes their lives easier because it means fewer people are paying attention to challenge bad decisions that they make.

Together we had lots of ideas on how to make our democracy better - such as the right to sack bad MPs, a new voting system or a ‘none of the above’ option when we go to vote. These things are only going to happen if more people are engaged, not fewer.

At the beginning of this year thousands of 38 Degrees members said that we should work together to get more people registered to vote. [1] That’s why, over the last few weeks, the office team and our partners Bite the Ballot have been hatching an exciting plan to register hundreds of thousands of our neighbours to vote.

On Saturday 26th April, a week before the voter registration deadline, we’ll go out on our streets and register our neighbours to vote. Already 4,000 of us have said we’d like to take part. Will you join in with other volunteers near you?

All you need to do is sign up to your local team now and you’ll be sent a registration pack and instructions. We need to get the final list of volunteers by Thursday, so please sign up now:


At the beginning of this year thousands of 38 Degrees members said that we should work together to get more people registered to vote. [2] That’s why over the last few weeks the office team and our partners Bite the Ballot have been hatching this exciting plan to register hundreds of thousands of our neighbours to vote. [3]

Here’s the plan:

  • Today you can use the new jointhevote.org website where you can join your team and choose the streets you want to cover.

  • Once everyone’s signed up and organised into teams, Join the Vote packs will be sent out to everyone with registration forms, instructions on what to do, a badge, and a guide to getting local media coverage.

  • On Saturday 26th April thousands of us will take to the streets, knocking on our neighbours’ doors, dropping off registration forms and a letter explaining about the EU elections. In the following days we’ll go back around and collect any registration forms.

  • Once they’re all collected you'll send them to the appropriate electoral registration office, in time for the final deadline on 6th May.
So what do you say? Will you join the team for your area and register your neighbours to vote?


Thanks for being involved,

James, Megan, Maddy and the 38 Degrees team

No comments:

Post a Comment

All comments welcome - but please be polite!