Characteristics of a Civil Registry
A civil registry is a list of basic information, such as name, gender, nationality, age, marital
status,
and address, on all citizens which is maintained by the state. Inclusion on the list is mandatory
and
citizens are required to provide updated information as appropriate to the officials who maintain
the list (typically the Ministry of the Interior). Normally, states that maintain a civil registry use
it
to generate a voters list, so that inclusion on the civil registry ensures inclusion on the electoral
registry. This is true, of course, for citizens who meet the eligibility requirements for voting.
The Ministry of the Interior in Denmark describes the Danish experience of linking the national
civil registry with the voters list:
It is a prerequisite for voting that the prospective
voter is registered in the electoral register (the
voters' list). The computerized electoral register is based on information already available in the
national civil registration system (also administered by the Ministry of the Interior), to which the
municipal authorities continuously convey basic, administratively relevant information about
citizens, including the acquisition of voting rights, changes of address, and death. Thus,
inclusion
on the electoral register and changes due to change of residence, etc. take place automatically
and continuously. As a result, the register is permanently updated, and only people living
abroad,
... have to take the initiative. They have to send a request to be on the register to the municipality
where they were permanent residents before going abroad.
A printout
of the permanently updated, computerized electoral register is made, with
eighteen days prior to an election as the reference day. Prospective voters who move to the
country after this date cannot be included in the register before election day and are therefore not
allowed to vote. Persons who move to another municipality less than eighteen days before a
general election remain on the electoral register of the initial municipality until after election day.
Changes in the electoral register because of (1) emigration, (2) death, (3) issue (or withdrawal) of
declarations of legal incompetence, and (4) people losing or obtaining Danish citizenship, which
are reported to the local authorities less than eighteen days before an election, are entered
manually
in the electoral register printout.50
The use of a civil registry to produce the voters list as described above requires a great deal of
effort to maintain the data needed for elections as well as the vital statistics data normally kept in
a
civil registry.
In some countries, or jurisdictions, that use a civil registry, such as Sweden, the voter is not
required to do anything in order to be registered to vote. Up-to-date files on voter eligibility are
maintained by the local taxation office, and voter registration is an automatic implication of
being
listed on the civil registry (see Swedish Taxation Office - The Population Register). In other cases, such as Senegal, voters must apply
to
register to vote even though the state also maintains a civil registry. When a separate register is
compiled, the compilation can take place much closer to an election. Because information such
as
date of birth, sex, name, and the like are taken from the civil list itself, this information need not
be
collected separately for the voters list. This considerably cuts time needed to perform data entry
and compile the list.
