Letters | Sunday, 31 January 2010

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Identity cards and voting documents misconceptions

I am not quite sure the Chief Electoral Commissioner has grasped the essence of the identity card and the electoral register (‘Bogus ID card could have led to new voting document’, 17 January, 2010). In Malta, the identity card carries a number that is related to the birth number and the year of birth. There are various checks and balances in the programming of the identity card/electoral register databases that ensure data integrity.
Since the ID card number is unique, the system will not accept a double ID card number with the same digit. Another check that was introduced when I acted as secretary-general of the Labour Party, is that the birth numbers are restricted to the number of births in that particular year. So if in 2009, Malta had 4,300 births, the system will not accept an identity card number exceeding 430009M.
When this person managed to get the identity card of a friend of hers, she got the identity card with the same ID number of her friend’s identity card and no new record in the database was created. What happened is that the identity number in question was used on two different identity cards. The issue of a renewed identity card, even if the original one is not lost, does not produce a security risk, since finally the system guarantees that the database only contains one record of that person.
Having said all this it is evident that the identity card/electoral register database system would not have issued two voting documents for the same person since that person is still considered as a single record in the database.

Jimmy Magro
Zebbug

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