Electoral Registration Changes

[Lucy Lass-Tick]

Worth noting (from HBC web site)

Individual Electoral Registration (IER) was introduced in England and Wales on Tuesday, 10th June 2014.
IER is a new method of registering to vote, and instead of using a household form to register to vote (as is currently the case), everyone will take individual responsibility for their own registration.In order to apply, a person needs to provide their National Insurance Number and Date of Birth.
This is used to verify that the person making the application is who they say they are, and will, in turn, reduce the risk of fraud and inaccurate entries on the Electoral Register.
As part of the transfer to Individual Electoral Registration, many people who are currently registered to vote will be registered automatically. With IER, electors can register on-line for the first time at https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote

[one direction]

As part of the transfer to Individual Electoral Registration, many people who are currently registered to vote will be registered automatically

Surely this defeats the object? If I'm fraudulently on the electoral register and an transfered automatically onto the new one then I'm fraudulently on that one as well?

Double edged sword in checking names and addresses against data held by the Higher Education Funding Council, the Royal Mail, the Student Loans Company, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Education Department and the Welsh government and other databases held by government agencies is one thing but extending it to privately-owned databases such as those belonging to credit reference agencies like Experian or tenancy deposit schemes, opens a whole new can of worms on how you manage the overlap between public and private data that is quite possibly being kept in a server outside the UK.

Big Brother Watch has warned against sharing data held by government agencies with private companies, saying it could be used to target direct mail or for other commercial purposes without the individual's consent.