On 20 November 2012 10:37, Katherine Bavage katherine.bavage@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:
Morning -
All members are voting members...unless I've missed something?
I think Harry might have been distinguishing between members that do vote and members that don't, rather than members than *can* vote. Just like insurance companies only check your details when you try to make a claim, we could just check when people try to vote.
Yes, the credit checking thing occurred to me but seemed a little excessive
- plus it would complicate our obligations in terms of possible data
protection (if it was part managed by staff) or I suspect would be really expensive.
I suppose what we need to demonstrate is that, say 'Joe Bloggs' is a) Is who he says he is (proof of photo ID) and b) Lives at the address he says he does (utility bill? Electoral roll?). If people pay from a verified paypal account the need to check is superseded, because Paypal requires all this information.
Electoral roll is no good - plenty of people aren't registered to vote. Utility bills only help if you are the one that pays them. People that live with their parents, or live in student halls, or simply have everything in the name of their spouse, aren't going to have one. I'm not sure Paypal does anything particularly thorough when it verifies your account, and people tend to only verify their accounts if they are selling things through paypal.
I suggested a credit scoring agency because it's the only thing I can really think of that is practical. It will check your details in lots of different ways, so is likely to be able to find something for everyone (some minors may have a problem - they would need to have a bank account in their own name or something in order to be in the database). I have no idea what it would cost, though.