Laurence Dollimore
THE UK government has used emergency legislation to extend the voter registration deadline for the EU referendum.
British voters now have until midnight on Thursday to register.
There was a mass scramble yesterday as a record 520,000 voters tried to register last minute, causing the system to crash.
Around 7.5 million voters are still said to be missing from the system.
Cabinet Office minister Matthew Hancock said:
“Following discussions with the Electoral Commission and strong cross party support expressed in the House of Commons, we will introduce secondary legislation to extend the deadline for voter registration until midnight tomorrow.
“Having taken the decision today, we think it is right to extend to midnight tomorrow (9 June) to allow people who have not yet registered time to get the message that registration is still open and get themselves registered.”
David Cameron said ‘record numbers’ accessing the site last night had caused the outage, and added that it was ‘extremely welcome’ that so many people wanted to register.
