A CAMPAIGN has been launched to find East Lancashire's 8,000 missing voters.

MPs are spearheading a drive to persuade those people missing from the electoral register to sign up to exercise their democratic rights.

Overall there are more than 8,000 voters missing from the electoral register in East Lancashire.

In Blackburn the register is 3,000 short. Only 101,500 people out of 104,500 are signed up to vote - 97.2 per cent of the eligible population.

In Burnley there are 1,100 missing with just 67,800 out of 68,900 registered - 98.4 per cent of the total.

In Hyndburn there 1,200 missing voters - with 59,900 out of 61,100 signed up - 98 per cent.

In Pendle there are 1,300 missing voters, with 64,200 out of 65,500 signed up - again 98 per cent.

In the Ribble Valley there are 1,000 missing voters, with 40,600 out of 41,600 signed up - a 97.7 per cent ratio.

In Rossendale and Darwen there are 600 missing voters with 50,200 out of 50,800 signed up - a 98.9 per cent rate.

Overall in East Lancashire there are 8,200 voters missing.

In Lancashire as a whole there are almost 40,000 missing voters with 1,118,300 supposed to be able to vote but only 1,078,400 signed up - a 96.4 per cent sum.

An all-party group of MPs believe this is a major problem for democracy.

Peter Pike, MP for Burnley, Gordon Prentice, Pendle MP, and Greg Pope, of Hyndburn, have signed a motion in the Commons supported by more than 100 MPs of all parties calling for Government action to find the missing voters.

The motion says that there is an average five per cent of the eligible population missing from the voting registers and says that the problem is probably understated.

In reality there could be between three and four million people absent from the registers.

The figures are confirmed by the director of statistics from the census.

The MPs believe that this continuing and high level of voter under-registration, particularly in the inner cities and among the homeless and rootless, black people and youth, should be of urgent concern to democrats in all parties.

The MPs say it undermines the quality of parliamentary democracy.

They are calling for the scrapping of the current system where there is a deadline that people have to meet to register to vote.

And it asks not merely for those people who have not already registered to take steps to get themselves registered late but to change the whole system.

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