Government moots ID card links for new UK voter database

It has long been realised that New Labour's claims that it's ID Card would be voluntary where bunkum. Nobody is going to fork out what hard earned cash they have left after the government has extorted it's slice for something that let the government track there life in detail while actually giving them nothing. It's own bill said they would be compulsory by 2013, and that you would be forced from day one to buy one when you got a new Passport. So it should not really come as a surprise that

Town hall bureaucrats are to be given sweeping new powers to investigate homes for identity card evasion and to impose heavy fines on occupants found without one.

From the Telegraph article quoted on Samizdata who also have a post on the House of Lords debate on ID Cards, which has some of the most twisted logic I have seen in a while trying to support this thing

We have to ask what greater freedom is there than the freedom to place a vote for a political party in a ballot box upon the basis of a mandate and a manifesto. That is the crux of it: the people have supported this measure.

What? the stupid bint that said that, insulated from democracy herself, may not have realised that the great majority of people did not vote for ID cards. 78% of the population did not vote for ID Cards, and yet they are being pushed through. So according to her the greatest freedom is to do whatever your political masters tell you to.

the Register that has been following this issue for a while supplies all the details, and their article is summed up by Great Britain, Not Little England who says

So, we're to get a compulsory ID system, linked to a National Identity Register, upon which the Electoral Register will be cross referenced to?

Great. As one who signed up to the first Refuse pledge (Refuse 2 is currently still open to signatories until the end of today), they now want to deny all of us who do not wish to be registered and categorised the right to vote as well? Wonderful. If you're not in favour of ID cards, if they get them through, you won't be able to vote against them either.

I echo his plea that if any of you haven't signed one of the two refuse pledges or the related one to help us that have signed resist New Labour should you feel unable to yourself.

Via Tim Worstall's coments we get to Chris Lightfoot who has already spent a great many posts taking apart ID Cards from a technical standpoint.and again looks in detail to this proposal finding the hints of a silver lining:

So, the Secretary of State could under this Bill require that to register for an election a person must give his NIRN on the canvass form, by going through the pilot procedure and issuing an order to that effect. However, it would then fall to each Registration Officer to decide how to treat a person who is not on the NIR:

(5) In such circumstances as are prescribed, a registration officer may also dispense with a requirement to provide a personal identifier mentioned in subsection (2)(c) above in relation to any person.

and

(4B) A registration officer in England and Wales or Scotland may determine that a person is not entitled to be registered if any of the personal identifiers is not provided in connection with the application relating to that person.

i.e., he would, in the hypothetical situation, have a choice on how to treat an elector who has decided not to register on the NIR or who has been erased from it.

Not much of a silver lining but at least it holds out the prospect that this will not lead to mass disenfranchisement since it will be up to the individuals at local level. Well this is of course until the inevitable decree comes from whitehall to disenfranchise all the non-people without an ID Card.