Draft Voting Eligibility (Prisoners) Bill

Here is the government’s draft bill offering Parliament a menu of options on prisoners’ votes.

Adam Wagner at the UK Human Rights Blog wondered what if any significance there might be in the that fact that the “status quo” option 3 is drafted differently from the current legislation. It seems from the explanatory notes (included below, at paragraph 35) that the bill’s intended to make clear

that a prisoner remains disqualified from voting when on temporary release from prison.

Thanks to Alexander Horne for pointing that out to me, as well as Joshua Rozenberg‘s piece making the same point. I’m not sure without further research whether or not that’s a change from the current law, but it does make the position clear on the face of the draft bill.

I’m not sure if there are any other significant changes or provisions – I’ll blog again about the draft bill if anything occurs to me.