I would have thought that it would depend on how this was being carried out. If this is a general trawl of all votes or a random sample then there may be difficulties. If, for example, you sent it to Fred Bloggs of x street, and his son (who was also called Fred Bloggs and lived there) opened it, wouldn't you have passed on information about the person had voted?
If, however, there was good reason to suspect a signature was fake then it wouldn't seem (to me) to be a problem.
Tony
-----Original Message-----
From: Graham Hadfield [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 10 June 2004 16:03
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Verifying voter and witness declarations
I've just been talking to colleagues in electoral registration. If I read
the message correctly you are investigating a suspected case of personation
- which is a criminal offence. Even though the ballot forms don't mention
the offence the statutes do.
You are processing personal data for the purpose of detecting whether a
crime has been committed. If it has then the perpetrator should have known
it was a criminal act as ignorance of the law is no defence. I think you
are OK to do it.
Graham
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