Hand over your NI number and date of birth if you want to keep the right to vote, Government says 3


Christopher Hope and Andrew Porter write in the Daily Telegraph:

Every Briton will be asked to give their National Insurance number and date of birth to register to vote.

The Government has announced that it will bring forward a new individual electoral registration system by a year to 2014 to cut down on electoral fraud and save money.

It will replace the current system under which an adult at an address fills in names and nationalities of all adults who live there. Everyone will be asked to provide “personal identifiers” such as their NI number and date of birth when they register to vote.

The new information will not be added to electoral registers and only used by councils to verify voters’ identity, the Government said. The scheme was due to start on a voluntary basis in 2014. However now it will be introduced compulsorily, saving £74million.

No voters will be removed from the electoral register for not registering individually until after the next General Election, due to take place in May 2015, giving people at least 12 months to comply with the new requirements.

However under the plans the Government will remove this threat of fines of up to £1,000 for people who refuse to give information to an electoral reform officer.

The Electoral Commission said it was worried that this might act as a disincentive to people to vote.

Peter Wardle, chief executive of the Electoral Commission, said: “This is the biggest change to the way we register people to vote since the introduction of the universal franchise. It needs to be managed carefully.”

The Government is also testing “data matching” techniques where other public authority databases are cross referenced to find people missing from the electoral register and to help root out fraudulent entries.


3 thoughts on “Hand over your NI number and date of birth if you want to keep the right to vote, Government says

  • Tom Welsh

    That would be unpleasant, if I were likely to wish to vote in a General Election in future.

    Since coming of age 40-odd years ago, I have never failed to exercise my right and duty to vote at every opportunity.

    Recently, however, I have come to realise that it is wrong to vote for any party that chooses to wage unprovoked aggressive war. As a citizen of a democratic nation, I share the responsibility and the guilt regardless; but while I can apparently do nothing to stop the killing, I can at least refrain from voting for it.

    That means I cannot vote for any Conservative, Labour, or Liberal Democrat candidate – now, or at any time before those parties formally denounce the wars in Serbia, Iraq, Afgahnistan, and Libya (which will never happen).

    So maybe it’s not a problem any more.

  • Roy

    This will disenfranchise immigrants who might otherwise have the right to vote in the UK. My wife resided for 10 years in the UK as was her right as an Irish citizen, and so she had the right to vote. Despite also having the right to work in the UK, it took her about three years before the DWP would actually issue her with one.

  • Stephen

    Looks like I won’t be voting again as I have no intention of handing over my NI number. Since voting has no measurable effect on how this country is governed, I can’t say that I am too vexed about it.

Comments are closed.