Something about the extension of the deadline for registering to vote in the EU referendum doesn’t add up. It even smells a bit fishy. Last night, the registration website crashed as tens of thousands of people tried to register before the midnight deadline; and in response, parliament today announced that it will pass emergency legislation to extend the registration period until midnight on Thursday. So in order to address a two-hour glut of registrations, the registration period will be stretched another 48 hours? Two days of further registration to mop up two hours’ worth of crashed, failed registrations? What’s going on?
There’s a danger we’re witnessing the politicisation of the registration process; the expansion of it to try to capture people who are more likely to vote Remain. There’s a whiff of generational gerrymandering. According to the BBC, virtually everyone who piled on to the registration website yesterday was young, or young-ish.
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