uk.businessinsider.com/exclusive-theresa-may-home-office-settle-status-plan-register-3-million-eu-citizens-alphabetically-2018-8
Theresa May considers plan to register 3 million EU citizens 'alphabetically' to cope with flood of applications
Adam Payne @ adampayne26
Home Office also considering alternative plans to register EU citizens by 1) sector and 2) region. However, there are concerns over the reaction if certain sectors (banking) and regions (southeast) are processed before others. Great insight from @tpgcolson
The Saboteur @ doomlordvek
Has anyone looked at the alphabetical prevalence of surnames across Europe? Ireland: lots of Os (if Irish citizens need to register). Poland: middle-to-end of alphabet.
Helene#FBPE#ABTV @ heleneSWCP
Dutch and Belgians: lots of Van. Germans: quite a few Von and W. French: quite a few de and Le. Not to mention that if you order people alphabetically, you risk mix ups (try looking up a Jacques Martin or a Peter Schmidt in the phone book). This is going to be such fun!
Henry Zeffman @ hzeffman
As a lifelong victim of the tyranny of alphabetical order I am sure the Home Office can think up a better way
Imagine every John Smith had to apply for a new passport in a three week period. How could that possibly go wrong? I'm also minded to remember the controversial cross check voter verification system in the us (which really is about voter suppression)
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Voter_Registration_Crosscheck_Program
From the article above:
Crosscheck relies on only two points of data for matching: name and date of birth. Matching based on first name, last name, and date of birth "fails for practically all common American names" according to ID Analytics analysis of a database of over 300 million unique records.
And
For voters and member states, misidentification can be costly. Each voter misidentified faces incremental privacy risk when their personally identifying information is sent to at least one state beyond his or her state of residence, and risks being inactivated or removed from voter rolls. In Ada County, Idaho, election officials relied on Crosscheck's list of "potential duplicate registrants" to mistakenly remove 765 voters. None were duplicate registrants.
And yes there is a real danger of certain groups being more affected than others, alphabetting won't stop that:
The loose matching standards used to identify "potential duplicate registrants" by the Kansas Secretary of State also raise significant concerns about the opportunity for racial bias in list maintenance. According to "Health of State Democracies", "50 percent of Communities of Color share a common surname, while only 30 percent of white people do," so that in the program's flagged lists, "white voters are underrepresented by 8 percent, African Americans are overrepresented by 45 percent; Hispanic voters are overrepresented by 24 percent; and Asian voters are overrepresented by 31 percent".
After examining "potential duplicate registrant" lists from some of the participating states, investigative reporter Greg Palast claimed the Crosscheck system "disproportionately threatens solid Democratic constituencies: young, black, Hispanic and Asian-American voters" with the intention of securing Republican victories. Palast concluded this was achieved by eliminating discrete individuals based on nothing more than similarity of name, a method with a "built-in racial bias" that especially eliminated voters from targeted minorities with a more limited pool of given names, for example, Hispanic voters named Jose Garcia.
No this isn't about voting, but if Mohammed Mohammed from France has more problems than his fellow EU citz, that might be an issue.
This is a department with a poor reputation on racial awareness and prejudice so if this is what they are planning, its worrying.
I'm a late alphabet myself. I also didn't take DHs early alphabet surname. Could that also lead to problems and break ups of families?
Btw did you know that early alphabeters are more likely to be elected; especially in elections where you are required to tick more than one name. People favour those closer to the top of the ballot paper.
Alphabetting solves fuck all, and creates other problems and potential risk.
I worry about the degree to which this is known and why that might prove attractive...