THE GOVERNMENT HAS opened a three-month public consultation today to ask whether you would be okay with your PPS number being used to reform the electoral register.
Some interesting suggestions in the article. It will be interesting to see the full public consultation document. I'll try to stick up the link when it is published today.
Clearly PPSN is the way to go rather than PSC. The wailing and gnashing about the latter being "mandatory ID" will only get worse if it's used. Plus the PPSN is the most complete and easiest to verify.
I'd be most interested to see how they propose to handle corrections and absentees. There would still be nothing stopping expats from registering to vote and having it sent to a family members' address; will they cross-check against revenue/social records to try and identify fraudulent registrations?
Also since there are varying categories of voter depending on nationality, they would need to ensure that when the system says Paul Murphy in Crumlin is not entitled to vote in Presidential Elections, that a correction of that record can be done quickly and permanently.
Funny to see the incendiary language used by the Journal though in comparison to real journalists. "The government is planning on stealing your PPSN and using it in the register!"
another consultation on voter.ie for the Dublin councils, where you can check the register and using mygovid.ie do the following
Add themselves to the Register of Electors (new applications, 1st-time registration)
Change their address
Edit their electoral details (incl. citizenship changes, change of name)
Remove themselves from the Register
