Now I imagine that anyone who reads a political blog like ours will have made sure that they are on the electoral register.
But all activists need to know how to advise a voter on registering. Simple, you just go to www.gov.uk/register-to-vote, enter your personal details including your National Insurance number and all will be sorted.
But what if you have lost your National Insurance number or you are away from home and can’t get hold of it – does that mean you are disenfranchised? Believe it or not, there is a website whose sole purpose is to answer that question, and it’s neatly called www.DoIneedmyNInumbertovote.co.uk. (I’ve inserted a few capital letters to make it easier to read but, as you all know, URLs are not case sensitive).
Apparently, your NI number usually functions as evidence of your identity but you may use alternatives instead, although they may delay the registration process. Read through the advice on the site about what to do next.
And don’t forget that the deadline for registering for the election is 20th April.
* Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.
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4 Comments
Minor point, “URLs are not case sensitive” isn’t actually true, some are, some aren’t
Mary
Living where I do in Richmond Park constituency, it might be reasonable to ask if to be a candidate in a general election you need to have all those tax-avoiding benefits of non-dom status inherited from a billionaire father and if you have an account number at the Swiss Branch of HSBC.
I don’t know if Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith has an NI number.
James is right. Originally most Internet servers were based of Unix technology, which recognises the difference between upper and lower case letters but some were Microsoft (DOS and Windows) which didn’t.
Nowadays I would expect a well designed website to have policy of how it treated the difference between upper and lower case and implement it, regardless of the underlying technology. The fact that some passwords are issued with a mixture of upper and lower case letters (I got one yesterday) suggests that some websites do see the difference.
I think it needs to be said that Northern Ireland is a bit different. Their registration system doesn’t seem to be available on line, though you can download and print a paper form, which includes ‘Tick this box if you have never had a national insurance number’.
Because of history of personation in elections there, photo ID is needed to vote in Northern Ireland. If you don’t have that, one can get an Electoral ID card (same form) which is accepted for a number of other purposes too.
The forms are available in an interesting selection of languages; Irish and Ulster Scots for natives who’d rather not use English. Then Hungarian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian and Slovak.
Thinking back, I first got a NI number when I was 21 and a half.