Tens of thousands opt for postal vote
Tens of thousands of voters may already have decided who they want as their MP after a rise in postal voting applications.
Councils who agreed to release figures to the Express & Star said they had seen an increase.
In Sandwell, as many as 10 per cent of voters will do so by post, 23,882 this time compared with 23,513 in 2010. South Staffordshire Council revealed it was issuing 10,565 votes by post. Wyre Forest, where the seat in Parliament changed hands at the last election, will see 11,855 people vote by post. Last time it was 10,775.
Lichfield District Council revealed there were 8,950 postal voters compared with 7,559 last time. Councils have not yet completed verifying applications from people to be on the electoral register, following a flurry of last-minute requests.
The voting rules have changed so that people now have to register themselves individually, rather than one person in the household being responsible for getting everyone onto the electoral roll. Last week, almost half a million people registered to vote in one day to beat the deadline.
The Electoral Commission declared it 'fantastic news'.
There were more than 1.7 million applications to register to vote in the final five weeks.
More than 1.5 million registrations were made online and approximately 170,000 have been paper applications. Almost 470,000 online applications have come from 16-to-24 year olds. But the Electoral Commission said millions of people remained unregistered.
