There was chaos overnight as the voter registration site crashed and everyone tried to figure out what to do about it before finally, the Government said it would introduce emergency legislation to extend voter registration deadline. That didn’t completely dominate the day in the EU referendum from your perspective – but it was close. Here we explore that and other conversations you’ve been having on the site, including thoughts on a perhaps surprising voice from the Green party and the latest celebrity endorsements.
Click on the links at the end of each section to get involved, or head over to our EU referendum live blog to follow the news and discussion as it happens. In case you missed it, also worth a look is this piece where readers share the one argument that made up their mind on which way to vote in the referendum.
1. Labour and Electoral Commission push for reopening of EU vote registration
The voter registration site crashed before the deadline on Tuesday night, with some suggesting this was caused by a surge following the Cameron-Farage TV debate. What went wrong? Nobody seems sure, but there was a clamour of politicians trying to figure out what they should say about it – and what outcome might best suit their interests.
As the Cabinet Office “urgently considered” with the Electoral Commission what should be done and David Cameron said people who register on Wednesday “will have a vote in EU referendum”, there was an interesting thread to your conversation about individual registration, and why we were in this position in the first place.
It's funny, given the subject of the referendum, that people still have to register to vote in Britain. In Europe, generally speaking, they have automatic registration. They find our system somewhere between quaint and silly, and that's before Cameron's mob arbitrarily turfed a bunch of people off the electoral register for no good reason and lots of bad reasons.
It did seem strange to some of you that it had come to this.
Why, in this digitalised 21st century should Brits have to register to vote at all?
In most other EU countries (if not all) we get our voting registration forms in the mail, 14 days before the vote. In one EU country, Estonia, they don't even have to leave their sofas, they have been able to vote online, for years.
It used to be that registration forms were sent to property owners or heads of households to register everyone who lived in the property. However, this meant more young adults were registered which is not good for the Tories, so they changed it to individual registration.
It really is laughable the Cameron and the idiot Osborne pressed ahead with individual registration despite electoral commission advice ..so their attempt at gerrymandering has come back to f**k up the referendum which they proposed for political advantage .....it has further damaged the economy ..trashed by Osborne's austerity .....woeful
Perhaps naturally, not all of you were sympathetic towards those who missed the deadline, but most of you had an answer for those calling out perceived laziness.
It's not as if people have had months to register is it...........................
Not the point. If they were eligible to apply before this computer crash, they are still eligible right up to the deadline.
It is the responsibility of the government to have this thing working, not the person who has applied before the deadline even if that was at 23.59.
If you had been denied access to anything, not just this fundamental democratic right, I'm sure you would be the first to demand justice.
Perhaps people were convinced to vote by the final debate and the pleas by the prime minister? Why not blame the debate schedulers rather than the people who are simply following the instructions?
Jeremy Corbyn and others are right: the voter registration deadline should be extended. People weren't given the time they were promised to register.
We should want as many people taking part in this referendum. The higher the voter turnout, the better.
Anyway ... all’s well that ends well?
Registration is still open. Cameron says registrations today will be entitled to EU vote. Stop crying and register.
2. The EU is an outsized behemoth beyond reform – the Green case for Brexit
We’ve been asking you at the bottom of these pieces what you’d like to see more of. You say green issues and the environment provoke conversations worth highlighting.
This piece from Jenny Jones, a former chair of the Green party opens by saying “the Green party is massively in favour of staying in the EU, despite seeing its many flaws as an organisation”. Jones goes on, though, to say that she “just doesn’t believe it is reformable” and makes her case – for leaving.
You were divided on what her thoughts would mean for core Green values, including, of course, the environment.
I have to disagree. The issues closest to the Green's heart - climate change and other environmental issues - are global issues that require global solutions, as are many other important ones such as the migration crisis, and just feeding everyone. The world splitting up (or remioning) in small countries is not only not helpful it is a recipe for disaster. We will not solve these issues unless we join together, and act in unity. This will never happen with 101 different countries, all fighting for their own self-interest. With half a dozen large blocks, we at least give ourselves a chance, however slim.
And blaming the EU for, for example, the deisel issue is only fair if you can demonstrate that we would have behaved any differently were we not in it. This was a failure of science, not politics, and there is no reason to think an independent UK would not have pushed diesel just the same.
Couldn't agree more with Jenny. The EU has had many years to offer meaningful reforms, it hasn't. I believe people who think its possible are either fantasists or manipulators of the human desire for good.
Lets raze it and start again.
I had to check I was still on the Guardian site. I was not expecting to read a pro exit piece from a Green activist anywhere, so it makes for interesting reading. The usual line I hear is that environmental progress is dependent on continued membership of the EU, and that without it we will go back to smog covered cities and beaches strewn with raw sewage.
It is also interesting to hear the debate re-framed as small is beautiful versus large and corporate rather than in terms of Little Englander nationalist versus cosmopolitan liberal.
I see arguments for both sides. Most of UK's environmental laws and policies (from water treatment to cleaner beaches to waste recycling to lawnnmower noise) come from the EC, even though UK is not in compliance with the Clean Air Act (surprise). The big elephant in the room is the CAP. As one CIFer noted, it does take less of the Eu's budget than it used to, but it still costs us a heck of a lot, 35% of the EU budget, in price support, payments to farmers, and so on. Environmentaly it is a disaster. Designed originally to preserve family/peasant farming, and ensure 'food security' in time of war, it has promoted agri business by its policies, and the price of land and food in the UK has soared. 'Europe' always paid more proportionately for its food and now UK does too. Food would be a lot cheaper after a Brexit, and we would no longer be flooded with tasteless over irrigated vegetables from eg the Netherlands.
You can click on the time stamps on any of these comments to get involved in the conversations.
The thing is Jenny, that many of the arguments you make against the EU - farming undermining environmental issues for instance - would happen here at a faster rate for as long as the Tories are in government. There would almost literally be a bonfire of forests. Whatever the downsides of the EU, there are at least like-minded people on the continent with whom one can make common cause to reverse extreme capitalism. With the City of London being what it is, any hope that a British government could reverse neo-liberal economics is for the birds - for as long as any live. I'm not sure what has hijacked your brain but for a Green to be voting out (and I vote for your party - many wasted votes over the years) is contrary to the common cause I would hope to see the Green Party espousing.
Good argument thank you Jenny. I would definitely vote for you, though not your official party policy. It seems both the Greens and Labour are officially out of step with many of their natural supporters on this.
3. EU referendum: star ‘experts’ line up to warn of Brexit risk in TV ad
If the views of Stephen Hawking, Shami Chakrabarti or Lord Sugar might sway you one way or the other, make sure you’re watching TV on Wednesday evening, as they are among experts warning about the risks of leaving the EU in a new Britain Stronger in Europe TV advert.
As Heather Stewart writes, the opening sequence of the Britain Stronger in Europe advert appears to undermine the remain campaign’s strategy of bombarding the public with facts and figures – and your reaction to bringing out the stars was rather cynical.
How about seeing ordinary people, with ordinary lives and worries line up? Why are 'stars' opinions more relevant? We need to see how ordinary peoples lives have been affected by the EU and how their lives might (and it is only might) change for the better or worse if we leave.
I always tire of celebrity endorsements for political campaigns or political parties. Can't we just concentrate on the facts and the evidence? I realise that Sugar knows a lot about business, and Shakrabarti has lots of experience in her field, but it still smacks of "this famous person is voting yes, so you should too", and comes across as a little patronising.
There were some attacks on the ad’s focus.
From the above article it appears all these people are speaking of the economic aspect.
But what about democracy?
The EU has consistently over-ruled or circumvented referendums in member states.
Its commissioners are appointed and we cannot choose them or get rid of them.
Lack of democracy in the UK in some respects does not excuse it at the more distant level of the EU wher it is even more vital because of how far removed it is from voters.
If Sugar wants us to stay and sort the EU out, this ad would have been better were he to involve the likes of Merkel and Juncker to tell us what they intended to do to convince us Brexiters (and an increasingly frustrated number of other EU citizens) what they intend doing to bring democracy and strict financial controls back into European politics.
So who really is getting you voting?
Well, both Right Said Fred and Keith Chegwin want out and that was what convinced me
Brexit now!
We’ll be back tomorrow with another roundup of what you’re talking about in the comment sections on the EU referendum. You can help inform what we report on by filling in the form below.
Cameron's own political weakness allowed the referendum in the first place, and his pathetic attempt to gerrymander future election results through individual registration (most likely to lead to non-Tory voters dropping off the register) have now come back to haunt him, because he needs those young votes now, or he's toast.
BTW, am I the only one to think that had Cameron decided to campaign for a Leave vote, Boris would be fighting to Remain? I know, I'm a cynical old bastard.