NO2ID

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18179075

People failing to register to vote could be fined as part of shake-up

24 May 2012 Last updated at 09:01

People who repeatedly fail to fill in forms registering to vote could be fined as part of a shake-up of the British electoral system.

At the moment, the head of a household fills in the details of those living in a property but ministers want people to register individually to combat fraud.

Those refusing could be issued with a "parking-style" fine by local councils.

Labour said fines could only be justified if they were an incentive to register and they must be "reasonable".

The potential sanction is included in the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill being debated for the first time in the House of Commons on Wednesday.

Through the legislation, ministers want to move to a system of individual electoral registration in England, Scotland and Wales for new voters by the time of the next Westminster election in May 2015.

Those already on the electoral register will have until 1 December to comply with the new rules.

...

The government said on Wednesday it had rejected calls to make failure to register a criminal offence. Instead, it will give local authorities the power to issue fines.

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Individual voter registration was introduced in Northern Ireland in 2002. Critics say it led to a sharp fall in numbers registered but ministers say any decrease was broadly in line with the rest of the UK and the register was considered more accurate as a result.

Ah, the old "civil offence" and penalty dodge which they were going to use for non-registration for ID for which there is no redress under law. Odd how a civil offence becomes more serious than a criminal one...

My response is in the style of Arkell v. Pressdram to all of this.

Arkell v Pressdram indeed

However this has had it's second reading without any major public outcry and is now going to the committee stage which presumably hammers out the actual regulations and size of fines.

So pretty much just waiting for HRH to give assent and councils will have a new offence for which they can pump money out of their constituents pockets.

And if you don't pay the civil offence fine it becomes a criminal offence. On thing I won't be doing is informing those jerks in my local council such things as DoB or NI number.

Actually I had completely forgotten, it's already an offence to either fill out incorrectly or fail to fill out the registration form, registration is compulsory, voting isn't

It's up to a £1000 fine at the moment

not sure which authority issues this though

This seems to be more of a strengthening of already extant legislation to encourage more enforcement for non-compliance.

However if they seriously think it will increase voter turnout or decrease fraud then they live in cloud cuckoo land.

Politicians don't really want people to vote anyway, they might not vote the way the politicians think they should and a low turnout contains more party member votes by proportion so it's easier to predict and influence the result, more votes makes politicians lives harder.

My understanding of the law is that this isn't quite the case. I'm pretty sure Guy confirmed this with the Cabinet Office, that actually you just have to return the form but you do not have to provide any information. Although if you provided false information that would be an offence.

The real issue here as well is what the roll is used for, and what information is contained within it. A couple of years ago the Electoral Commission looked at people providing unique identifiers such as biometrics to help counter impersonation. There is also talk of cross-referencing the electoral roll with other information to ensure people are enrolled. We presume the roll will also then be used for crime prevention and fraud detection.

Before you know it there is in my view a real risk an electoral roll based on individuals could start to develop into something akin to the National Identity Register. Sadly the electoral reformist are so keen to encourage participation that they don't fully appreciate this risk, that could easily have been avoided with an opt-out system as was originally proposed by the Cabinet Office.

Most of the time the form is prefilled for your convenience so all the information is already there. Any change to circumstances is supposed to be noted. It also doesn't cost anything to return, though I would have thought it would be even cheaper to not force a "re-registration" (unaltered returns are simply recycled as no change to records is needed, just a mark against the "still subservient" column); no change, no need to return (but make sure you securely destroy it so naughty identity thieves don't make off with your granny's knitting), sorry to have bothered you

Someone needs to tell the Information Commissioner's office then

http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_the_public/topic_specific_guides/electoral_register.aspx

So who actually *checks* that the form has been filled in correctly? Checks that the named person signing the "I swear its true, prosecute me if its not" bit at the bottom actually exists? Checks that the person they want to prosecute has even seen the form? (I found it one time in a pile of mouldering, months old mail, by which time they'd got to sending legal threats. Which I also found mouldering in the pile! Had an interesting email exchange with the registration officer about how free they were with issuing threats that I never found out about till six months later, and why hadn't they send them recorded delivery?)

Any checks on postal voting applications?