Professor Michael Marsh:

I can speak about every country in Europe but I remember asking a professor of politics from the University of Amsterdam what they did about the electoral register in the Netherlands. He said they knew where everybody lived. Whenever one moves into a house one is required to register. Most of Europe operates under a law that is more Napoleonic than British and the role of the citizen typically has been more that of subject than it was under British law but their electoral registers are far more effective than ours. Ours is probably a bit more like that of the US, which is probably the worst electoral register in the world and one in which anything up to 30% of the electorate are not on the register at all. By US standards we are doing pretty well but by the standards of most of the rest of the democratic world we are doing poorly.