British Prime Minister David Cameron said he is looking at extending the deadline to register to vote in the forthcoming “Brexit” referendum after a surge in last-minute applications crashed a government website Tuesday night.
Cameron, who favors remaining in the European Union, tweeted Wednesday that people who wished to vote in the referendum should continue to register, even though the deadline to do so had passed.
He said the government was in “urgent discussions with (the) Electoral Commission to try to ensure people who register can vote.”
The Electoral Commission said it would support such a move.
Eleventh-hour surge
An unprecedented surge of 525,000 people registered Tuesday — the last possible day for people to submit their details in time for the June 23 referendum on whether to leave the EU.
That was more than seven times the number of people who had applied the previous Tuesday.
Some people who had found themselves unable to register took to Twitter to vent their frustrations, with the hashtag #ExtendTheDeadline circulating as news of the technical failure spread.
The Electoral Commission said in a statement Wednesday that “many people” would have missed out after issues started arising at 10.15 p.m. Tuesday — when more than 50,000 were trying to register on the site at the same time.
“There will be many people who wanted to register to vote last night and were not able to,” the statement said.
It said the registration deadline is set out in the law, and it advised the government to introduce urgent legislation to extend the deadline.
Other politicians urge extension
The technical failure prompted some politicians to call for a deadline extension to allow all those who wished to vote to be able to do so.
Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn of the Labour Party tweeted that if the site had crashed, then the deadline “has to be extended.”
Tim Farron, leader of the Liberal Democrats, also tweeted his support for an extension. Both politicians are in favor of Britain remaining in the EU.
Younger voters behind surge
The rival “Vote Leave” and “Vote Remain” campaigns have been neck and neck, with pundits saying the race is too close to call.
But those in the latter camp are likely to take encouragement from the last-day surge in registrations, which came disproportionately from younger voters who are widely seen as more in favor of remaining in the EU.
Government figures on voter registration showed that the largest group applying Tuesday (170,000) were ages 25 to 34, followed by those under 25 (132,000).
The spike in advance of the cutoff began Monday when 226,000 people applied to vote.
Campaign ramps up
Cameron made a fresh appeal to voters this week.
A vote to leave would put a bomb under the British economy, he said, accusing “Brexit” campaigners of misleading the public.
“There’s a passionate debate taking place in our country, and we should be proud of the fact that this is an enormous exercise in democracy and an enormous exercise in sovereignty, but we must make this decision on the basis of facts and arguments,” Cameron told reporters Tuesday.
If Britain votes to leave the EU, the country will engage in two years of complex exit negotiations.
If Britain votes to remain, Cameron will have to make a reformed relationship with the EU work.