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The association held a poll of more than 200 of its administrators and nearly all voted for a ban on the sale of data from the register to direct marketing companies.

Caroline Roberts, the DMA’s director of public and legal affairs, said: "The most telling part of this survey is that the administrators supporting a ban have said the process of selling this data to companies is a 'pain in the backside' and not cost effective."

The Local Government Association told the BBC that the practice is not a significant earner for councils, which are making £2,000 a year from selling details from the edited version of the register.

Roberts said that if the process was not cost-effective then councils should apply to raise the cost. Opting out of the edited version of the electoral register will not stop people from receiving direct mail – the Mail Preference Service does that, she said.

The Local Government Association has claimed that the public are put off from registering to vote because of the practice of selling this data. Roberts said there was no evidence of this.

"Direct marketers use the edited register as one way to verify data. We have a good argument for using this as a data source and we will make that argument," she said.

Mark Roy, chief executive of The Read Group, said the edited register was no longer widely used by direct marketers to verify data because more accurate sources are available.

"What the register represents is a cheap and efficient way to source mass data, but it is only a less responsible minority using this raw data to carpet bomb consumers," he said.

The call from electoral officials comes after a series of high profile data losses. It was reported this morning that the data of a million customers of the Royal Bank of Scotland was found on a secondhand computer sold on internet auction site eBay.

According to Roberts, bad publicity such as this has made the public more concerned about the safety of personal data, but is a separate issue and not one that would be addressed by banning the use of the edited electoral roll.