Registering for Elections

An article here about Wrexham Borough. Same applies to Flintshire.

http://www.wrexham.com/news/electoral-registration-changes-got-your-letter-46729.html

I recently had cause to search the Wrexham Electoral Election. Someone told me that my father had a sister, unknown to me.
The sister had a daughter who lived in a certain post code area of Wrexham. The daughter's married name was Jones, I also had initials for her and her husband.

You can look through the Electoral Register by hand. It is your right. They do however handicap you. It would be very easy for it to be database searchable. The rules do not allow for this.
My task was to look through tens of 1000's by hand.

Council's sell the names to 3rd parties. You can elect not to be sold I think.

I realised the futility of the search. So I paid £12 to 192.com and found address immediately.

Perhaps unfair.

In the end one happy relative ( and 192.com ) who had been searching streets that my parents used to live in for clues of my existence. Angela now has an extended family from Wales all the way to Greece.

Apparently the new registration will make it more difficult for electoral fraud.