General election 2019: Thousands registering to vote ahead of deadline
- Published
About 8,000 applications to vote in the general election in Scotland are being received every day, new figures show.
The deadline for eligible voters is 26 November and 3,960,093 people are currently registered to vote, according to the Scottish Assessors Association.
Electoral registration officers have described application rates as "steady" but called for people not to leave registering to the last minute.
Voters poll cards will posted out in the coming days.
Pete Wildman, secretary of the Scottish Assessors Association, which helps co-ordinate electoral registration services across the country, said: "If anyone does not received a poll card, and has not applied to register, they should apply as soon as possible
"We anticipate that the number of applications will increase noticeably as we approach the cut off for registration at midnight on 26 November."
Don't get left outside on polling day - here's how to register to vote
The 3,960,093 people on the register relates to all applications received by 5 November and validated by 14 November.
The haul is up from the last official tally of Scottish voters, in December last year, when 3,925,800 people were on the register.
However, there remains thousands of eligible voters not registered to vote.
The latest available population estimate for Scotland shows there are 4.4m people over the age of 18 in the country, though some of them - such as EU citizens - are not entitled to vote in the general election.
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Research published by the Electoral Commission in October suggests that 16% of eligible voters were not properly registered at their current address for national polls.
The study , externallooked at both the parliamentary and local government registers.
In Scotland, the former were 84% complete and 87% accurate, while the latter were 83% complete and 86% accurate.
From the figures, the elections watchdog estimated that between 630,000 and 890,000 people who were eligible to be on the local government rolls were not properly registered, while up to 745,000 entries on these registers were not accurate.
'It only takes five minutes'
People under the age of 35 and those who rent rather than own their homes were the most likely to be missing from the registers, according to the study.
An Electoral Commission spokeswoman said: "It only takes five minutes to register to vote online so if you want to make sure your voice is heard in the UK general election, register online by 26 November."
