I got that form from the council last week, the one you fill out so you can vote. Maybe you got one too? Unfortunately it reminded me of a very irksome encounter I had with the democratic process at the last election for the London mayoral and the Greater London Assembly in May.

Basically I couldn't vote as I was not on the register. I didn't realise this of course, despite Mrs Duff insisting we check with the council that we were on the register. "No no" I said "I definitely put us on the list. I did it online when we moved in September."

Which I did, honest. I filled out the form on the Council's website notifying all their respective services that where we were moving from and where we were moving to. After we moved in we received confirmation form the Council Tax. Inevitably we started to receive bills as well. I also got a phone call from a nice lady who said that everything had gone through fine. I made a point of asking her if we were on the electoral roll as I've, mostly, always exorcised my right to vote. I'm a bit anal about it to be honest and I'm sure she told me that yes, we were on the register... except unfortunately we weren't.

Mrs Duff decide to ring the council a few days before the election only to find that we were not listed and should not expect a polling card. I contacted them shortly after to find out why and was told that they had not received any forms from me. I suggested that if they'd not received any notification that we'd lived at my new address, then presumably we were still registered down the road at the old place. The person I spoke to at the check seemed to think that this was reasonable and checked my old address only to find that we weren't there either.

So it seemed that we'd been taken off the electoral roll but not put back on again. It turns out that Electoral Services don't register people in September so I guess my form just didn't get processed. What troubles me is that, presumably, the people who moved in to our old flat didn't get registered either. No forms were sent out prior to the election so its unlikely that new people would have had the chance to register, or to realise that they were not registered just as we didn't. If that's the case then why didn't things stay exactly as they were? Why weren't our names still on the list at the old place?

The upshot of it was that we couldn't register on time. We missed our vote and were effectively disenfranchised because of an administrative process. I wonder how many other people have missed out like that?

I thought about writing to my duly elected GLA representative to tell him about it. However, it turns out that he used to be deputy leader of Croydon Council so I didn't think it would do much good.