Question

To ask the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South, representing the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission, if she will conduct a national audit to determine how many (a) students and (b) other registered voters voted in more than one parliamentary constituency in the General Election 2017.

The UK’s electoral registers are maintained by individual Electoral Registration Officers appointed by each local authority in Great Britain and by the Chief Electoral Officer in Northern Ireland. This means that it would not be feasible to identify duplicate entries between registers without considerable additional financial and operational resources. Providing a mechanism for EROs to compare information about electoral register entries more automatically across all 381 registers could help to further improve the accuracy and completeness of electoral registers and could also help to address the risk of voting more than once at a relevant election.

It is an offence under Section 61(2)(a) of the Representation of the People Act 1983, for an elector to cast more than one vote on their own behalf in a UK Parliamentary general election or at a referendum. This offence carries a fine which is unlimited in England and Wales, or a fine not exceeding £5,000 in Scotland.

Investigations into possible criminal offenses are a matter for the relevant police forces. The Electoral Commission has provided advice and guidance to UK police forces about how to investigate allegations that an individual may have voted twice, including obtaining from the relevant Returning Officers the marked copy of the register.