Written by Thomas Worth
In the months leading up to elections, voters are often inundated with all sorts of literature from political parties and candidates. From leaflets to surveys, or even sudoku puzzles, political parties use campaign literature to vie for our votes. It is important for the health of our democratic process that parties and candidates are able to communicate with voters, and many people will value the opportunity to hear from those who are seeking their votes. However, other people may be less keen to hear from parties or, more likely, particular parties.
When you consider that during the 2024 General Election campaign alone, Royal Mail delivered 184 million freepost leaflets from candidates. And that this figure doesn’t take into account those delivered by the candidates and parties themselves, you begin to see why some people would rather not have their letter boxes clogged up.
The Electoral Register
So how do political parties and candidates find out where to send their campaign literature? The answer is the Electoral Register, which contains the names and addresses of people who are registered to vote. There are two versions of the Electoral Register, those being the Full Register and the Open Register.
The Full Register includes the names and addresses of everyone who has registered to vote. Aside from registering to vote anonymously for those who are vulnerable, there is no way to opt out of this if you are registered to vote. This version of the register is not publicly available.
Meanwhile, the Open Register is a version of the Register that is available for a fee to any person, business or organisation. Being on this register may be how you end up with plenty of junk mail through your door! When registering to vote, you can opt out of the Open Register, although the default option when registering is to be on this version of the register.
When it comes to elections, though, it is the Full Register that dictates whether parties will contact you through direct deliveries. This is because political parties, candidates and registered campaigners are entitled to receive the latest copy of the Full Register when it comes to election time. Importantly, they also receive a ‘marked’ register which highlights what previous elections people have voted in, although of course not who they have voted for, allowing them to better target voters.
Write to the parties, but don’t hold your breath
For those who want to stop leaflets from coming through their door, an option is to write to the political parties to tell them to stop sending post personally addressed to them. The issue here is that it is rarely the national party that is sending the literature, it will be the local branch of the party, so you would need to contact them as well. Even then, this may not prevent the delivery of unaddressed leaflets that are delivered to all households in the area, either by local volunteers or paid delivery firms. Parties are also not obliged to stop sending you literature through Freepost mailing they may be entitled to at election times.
Another logical step would be to block junk mail with Royal Mail. However, the Freepost leaflets delivered by Royal Mail on behalf of candidates are not classified as junk mail. Therefore, taking this step, which would be great if you wanted to stop window cleaning leaflets, won’t necessarily prevent campaign literature from coming through your letterbox, especially as unaddressed leaflets from political parties are often not delivered by Royal Mail.
Junk mail and the Representation of the People Bill
With the imminent passage of the Representation of the People Bill, the way we get onto the Electoral Register is likely to change. This bill aims to improve our democracy by introducing votes at 16, changing political finance rules and expanding the forms of recognised voter ID. Part of the bill involves exploring Automatic Voter Registration which is likely to lead to changes in the process of registering to vote. In relation to campaign literature the most important change is the shift around the Open Register.
Instead of the current system, where we have to opt out of the Open Register, changes in the Representation of the People Bill mean that when registering people will automatically not appear in the Open register and would have to opt-in if they wanted to. The removal of this presumption means that voters will have increased control over their own personal data all while still being able to play their part in the democratic process.
While this won’t mean that you will receive less campaign literature from parties or candidates, it may mean that you are potentially likely to receive less junk mail, although we won’t hold our breath yet!
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