Only four out of 10 people in the minority communities in the North are registered to vote compared to more than nine out of 10 in the general population, a survey conducted by the Electoral Commission in Northern Ireland has found.
Northern political parties must make greater efforts to persuade black and ethnic minorities in the North to vote, the commission said yesterday.
This four out of 10 figure compares unfavourably with England and Wales, where an estimated 83 per cent of BME (black and minority ethnic) communities are registered. Moreover, of those minority groupings who are registered in the North, less than half bother to vote compared to an overall turnout in the North of 64 per cent.
The commission discovered that one of the reasons for the low election participation was that some people in the minority communities feared being linked with either the nationalist or unionist political groupings.
"One in five said they did not vote because they did not want to appear to be taking sides in the politics of Northern Ireland," the survey reported.
A quarter said they were not interested in politics and 22 per cent said they did not go to the polls because they did not know enough about the history or politics of the North. Almost a third said they did not know how to register and a quarter said they did not know they had to register.
Another key finding was that there was a lack of engagement between representatives of BME communities and political parties. Electoral commissioner Karamjit Singh said it was vital that black and ethnic minority communities, who are estimated to constitute about 20,000 potential voters, were not excluded from the political process.
"This is a wake-up call for political parties, for community groups and for the community in general. The question we have to be asking is why is there this marked absence of people from these communities in public and political life in Northern Ireland," he said. Mr Singh said the perception in minority communities was that the political parties with the exception of some individual politicians did not do enough to be more inclusive of minority groups.
Commission head Seamus Magee said more innovative ways must be found to encourage these groups to register and vote.
