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Monday 22 August 2016

Voter registration security

If you don't register, you can't vote. So when the voter registration form arrived today, I took action.

You go to their web site, and log in. It wanted my postcode, and two security numbers that it supplied in the letter.

Wait, what?

Why two numbers? One is 6 digits, one is 8 digits. How is this better than a single 14 digit number? Why have they made it more complicated than it needed to be?

So I filled it all in, did the Captcha, and answered the questions in the form. All done and dusted, but then it asked for feedback. So I asked the obvious question. Why two numbers?

2 comments:

  1. The thing that I noticed was a Y/N field as to whether aged 76 or over. Couldn't remember noticing that before, but apparently it used to say age 71 and is used to assess eligibility for jury service. So 71 to 75 year olds are no longer considered too doddery to be part of 12 good men and true.
    I may be wrong, but I didn't see a way on online form to change the Y/N value (not that I need to!)

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  2. Posit: a single 6-digit number is harder to get wrong than a 14-digit number; a single 8-digit number is harder to get wrong than a 14-digit number - especially as you are now concentrating anew, because this is a new number you have to supply.

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