What will you be doing on June 23 this year? Perhaps you’ll be packing your tent and donning your wellies, ready for the start of Glastonbury. Or maybe you’ll be celebrating the end of your A Levels, or preparing to graduate. Otherwise, you may just be taking it easy, slipping into the long summer vacation.
But of course, June 23 is also the date when voters will make one of the most important decisions of their lives: whether they think that the United Kingdom should remain a member of the European Union, or leave. The campaigns offer two very different visions for the future: one where the UK has access to a single market and shared decision-making in a reformed EU, and one where the nation has greater control over its own rules.
I’m guessing most of you didn’t bother with the recent police and crime commissioner elections. Londoners will perhaps have voted to choose a new mayor. But no poll – not even a general election – will have such a profound effect on this country’s future as the EU referendum: especially for young people, who will have the longest to live with the consequences.
Yet survey evidence shows that 18 to 24-year-olds are the least likely citizens to be registered to vote – let alone actually go to the polls.
The problem has been made worse by a recent rule change on voter registration. Once, universities and colleges could register all of their students to vote en masse. Now, students (or their families) have to register themselves – an extra task to fit in alongside busy exam schedules and last-minute essay writing. And even those who have registered might encounter problems: according to a new poll commissioned by Universities UK, only 56% of students who are registered at their term-time address say they are likely to be there when the referendum takes place. This means that they need to get a postal vote – another demand on their time.
Catherine Barnard, Professor of EU law and employment law, University of Cambridge, will be taking part in the BBC East live debate on the EU Referendum on 12 June in Norwich. You can apply to be in the audience - read more here.
Image: Students at Fitzwilliam College
Credit: University of Cambridge
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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