Each needed an address to be eligible to vote so The Big Issue the magazine for the homeless signed them all up

Each needed an address to be eligible to vote, so The Big Issue, the magazine for the homeless, signed them all up. The result: new voters for Manchester and some pretty unconventional addresses on the register, including "The Arndale Shopping Centre car park", "Marks & Spencer doorway" and "The back of Tesco". The Green Party did not canvass Mr Dale - an engaging 36-year-old who confessed he had missed all the election literature - but they will be pleased to know he would not vote for anyone else. The environment is as close to his heart as you might expect of an outdoor dweller and Mr Dale certainly knows his shrubs. "Can you smell that? It must be the hawthorn," he said, its aroma wafting across the Deansgate Canal towpath not far from his "home" as he strolled with his alsatian/pit-bull cross, Nip, so named because he loves affectionately nipping your face, said Mr Dale, worryingly. "There are enough shrubs and trees for a dawn chorus at my place, not to mention the ducks," he said "The morning freight trains are the problem. They're my alarm call at 3am each day." Mr Dale, whose face is burnished a deep brown by eight years living rough, admitted he is a cynical voter.

"I remember when Labour got in: I was selling Big Issues and they were all saying `Labour's in - you'll be all right now'. It never worked out like that," he said, fingering a stone hanging from his beard which is supposed to ward off bad spirits "In the end the Greens seemed just right. I thought `I'll just take my chance on this donkey'."Ruth Turner of The Big Issue said enfranchising people like Mr Dale was critical. "If homeless people are to move back into jobs and homes and take their place in society, we must make sure they have their say in how society is run.". AS MANY as 2.5 million people could not vote yesterday because they want to avoid junk mail. To stop unsolicited post from companies that have bought electoral rolls, growing numbers of people are failing to register to vote. George Howarth, Home Office minister, commenting on the sale of registers, said: "This practice is controversial and unpopular with many members of the public.

So much so that some people may be reluctant to vote." Local councils sell electoral rolls for anything between pounds 2.50 and pounds 18 per thousand names to direct marketing firms and other organisations such as charities and insurance companies who regularly send junk mail.Last year alone, companies of all sizes in the United Kingdom spent pounds 1.6bn on direct-mail campaigns to boost sales. The electoral register reveals how many adults live in a house and how long they have lived there. Specialist companies then refine this information to produce target lists of potential customers.A working party chaired by Mr Howarth is looking into a series of issues surrounding the availability of the rolls. One issue has been how the register helps criminals target their victims. The person who killed the television presenter Jill Dando last week, for example, may have found her home address using an electoral register.David Smith, assistant registrar at the Data Protection Agency, is a supporter of stopping the sales but concedes that some access to rolls may be necessary to combat criminal activity."The case for having the register available is strong enough where things like money laundering are concerned. Rolls are useful for establishing the identity of people depositing large sums of cash," he said.However, he believes that a "tick-box" on the electoral register would give people control over who their details are sold to, and would prevent members of the general public gathering names and addresses without a valid reason.Robert Mayes, spokesman for WWAV Rapp Collins Group, Europe's largest direct-marketing company, said banning access to electoral registers would cost UK businesses pounds 55m a year. Yesterday, he said that voters who chose to tick the box suggested by Mr Smith could be doing themselves a disservice."The register is used a lot for credit referencing.