Voting more than once at a General Election is a crime which carries an unlimited financial penalty. Any evidence of an individual who is suspected to have voted twice at the General Election should be reported to the Police for investigation. In addition, the presiding officer at a polling station may ask any elector if they have already voted, and may withhold a ballot paper from an elector if they do not answer the question satisfactorily. The electoral register is marked to record the issuing of ballot papers to individuals at polling stations; there are electronic records of the issuing of postal votes representing an equivalent to the marked register for some electors. These records can already assist with an investigation should any voting irregularities be suspected.<\/p>
There are a number of significant technical and practical barriers, as well as security and privacy concerns, relating to implementing a national electoral registration database. The Government has no plans to create such a database.<\/p>"} , "answeringMember" : {"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/members/3359", "label" : {"_value" : "Biography information for The Earl of Courtown"} } , "answeringMemberPrinted" : {"_value" : "The Earl of Courtown"} , "dateOfAnswer" : {"_value" : "2017-09-06", "_datatype" : "dateTime"} , "groupedQuestionUIN" : {"_value" : "HL1030"} , "isMinisterialCorrection" : {"_value" : "false", "_datatype" : "boolean"} , "questionFirstAnswered" : [{"_value" : "2017-09-06T12:52:14.813Z", "_datatype" : "dateTime"} ]} , "answeringDeptId" : {"_value" : "53"} , "answeringDeptShortName" : {"_value" : "Cabinet Office"} , "answeringDeptSortName" : {"_value" : "Cabinet Office"} , "date" : {"_value" : "2017-07-18", "_datatype" : "dateTime"} , "houseId" : {"_value" : "2"} , "legislature" : [{"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/terms/25277", "prefLabel" : {"_value" : "House of Lords"} } ], "questionText" : "Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the extent to which detecting incidents of the same person voting more than once in the same election from different addresses will (1) require the creation of a national database based on collating the local electoral registers as maintained by each Electoral Registration Officer, (2) compilation of the marked registers from each election in electronic format, and (3) enabling such information to be used by those investigating such allegations", "registeredInterest" : {"_value" : "false", "_datatype" : "boolean"} , "tablingMember" : {"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/members/2484", "label" : {"_value" : "Biography information for Lord Rennard"} } , "tablingMemberPrinted" : [{"_value" : "Lord Rennard"} ], "uin" : "HL1029"} ], "itemsPerPage" : 10, "page" : 0, "startIndex" : 1, "totalResults" : 1, "type" : ["http://purl.org/linked-data/api/vocab#ListEndpoint", "http://purl.org/linked-data/api/vocab#Page"]} }