The Spill-Over and Displacement Effects of Implementing Election Administration Reforms: Introducing Individual Electoral Registration in Britain

The UK government intends to replace household electoral registration with indi-vidual electoral registration (IER). This article assesses the likely effects of the reform using an innovative methodology. A thematic analysis of extensive quali-tative interviews with local election officials, conceived as ‘street-level bureau-crats ’ responsible for implementing elections, was undertaken. Their local knowledge provides evidence that IER might improve the security of the registra-tion process. However, it is likely to lead to a considerable decline in levels of elect-oral registration which might be highest amongst the young, elderly and minority populations; is a more resource-intensive method of compiling the electoral regis-ter; will pose new issues with data and technology for election officials; and, is likely to have a number of further ‘spill-over ’ effects on other aspects of election administration, such as the cutting of other services. The article encourages further research using the local knowledge of street-level bureaucrats to examine the ‘back-office ’ effects of election administration reforms since they may further our understanding of the complexities and unintended consequences of institutional reforms which might be overlooked in quantitative studies. 1