ABSTRACT
A good register is the foundation of electoral administration; on this everything rests. The invention of the register was one of these pieces of ingenuity which make advances in the art of government possible, as advances in the technology of measurement make scientific progress possible; and (as happens in such cases) it did not attract much attention at the time. Traditional elections of the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ type were conducted without registers, and this was one reason for confusion and corruption in handling even the relatively small electorates of that time. The French electoral systems of the revolution and of the Napoleonic period, though more democratic in theory than in practice, had the advantage of resting on an organised administrative system, and permanent electoral lists have existed in France since 1791. The introduction of electoral registers in Britain was one of the decisive steps taken by the Reform Act of 1832, and the necessity of ‘attending to the register’ became the basis of party organisation in the new constituencies. The system did not at first work well, but its necessity has never been questioned. In a developed system of free elections the process of registration works so smoothly that its importance is scarcely noticed.
