Register appeal gets our vote...

ON SEPTEMBER 18 Scotland will make the biggest choice about its future in more than 300 years.

So it is worrying that a quarter of eligible Scots are not registered to vote.

The Yes campaign — which needs all the votes it can get — has launched an appeal to get Scotland’s “missing million” on to the electoral register before September’s referendum.

The appeal by the Yes campaign coincides with the UK’s first National Voter Registration Day, which aims to encourage 250,000 new voters to sign up to the register.

The Courier reveals today that a million Scots, including tens of thousands of people in Tayside, Fife and the Forth Valley, are not registered to vote.

In Fife alone, 20,000 people have failed to return their annual canvass form, while Angus has 9,000 adults who are not on the voters’roll.

This paints a worrying picture of a nation that may sleepwalk into a future it does not want.

Both the Yes campaign and Better Together agree that Scotland faces a once-in-a-generation decision.

This newspaper has taken no sides in the referendum campaign, and it is true that theYes campaign has the most to gain from getting unregistered voters signed up. .

Yet we wholeheartedly support the drive to track down Scotland’s missing voters. The independence referendum is the most important single vote Scots will cast in their lifetime. It is vital that all who are entitled have their say. Anyone who can vote but does not has no right to complain about the version of Scotland they find themselves living in.