Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Government grasps the nettle
Just time for a quick blogpost today, though I may be motivated to do more later tonight. For once I am going to congratulate the government on grasping the nettle. In this case they have finally agreed to end the system whereby one person in each household names all those eligible to vote in their property.
Voters will be allowed to register individually on the electoral roll from the autumn of 2010 by either signing a form or providing identification. Household registration will still be an option until the autumn of 2015, when individual registration will become compulsory if it is given approval by the Electoral Commission. This is a valuable step forward in tackling electoral fraud and will hopefully lead to a more accurate register of voters.
I do have concerns about the pilot data-matching scheme which will allow electoral registration officers to obtain relevant and restricted data from public authorities such as Revenue & Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions though. The danger is what happens to this data afterwards, especially as the register is a public document. I think we need some reassurances as to what data will be shared and what safeguards are being put in place to prevent abuse.
Voters will be allowed to register individually on the electoral roll from the autumn of 2010 by either signing a form or providing identification. Household registration will still be an option until the autumn of 2015, when individual registration will become compulsory if it is given approval by the Electoral Commission. This is a valuable step forward in tackling electoral fraud and will hopefully lead to a more accurate register of voters.
I do have concerns about the pilot data-matching scheme which will allow electoral registration officers to obtain relevant and restricted data from public authorities such as Revenue & Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions though. The danger is what happens to this data afterwards, especially as the register is a public document. I think we need some reassurances as to what data will be shared and what safeguards are being put in place to prevent abuse.
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this will lead to yet more erroneous information in the desire to gather as much info as poss-moses thurs
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