By Andy Fenwick, Worcester South Labour Party member
You cannot trust the Boris Johnson with anything: lying to the Queen, to parliament, to his wives, but most of all to the residents of Britain. Remember that red bus with the money for the NHS?
Boris is even very adept at future lying: the rise in the minimum wage is pledged for 2025. He has his sound bites all over the place declaring more nurses and doctors for some time in the future. What has this got to do with voter ID, you may well ask. Well, his arguments in support of this policy are straight out of his invented fictitious storybook.
Out of 45 million voters in the country, only 366 cases of voter-fraud was reported at the last general election and of that there was only one prosecution. So what is the demand for this change?
Under plans unveiled in the Queen’s speech, the Conservatives will insist that voters produce photographic ID at the ballot box for parliamentary elections and English local elections. A trial of the scheme in local elections this year saw 800 people reportedly turned away from polling stations due to the lack of photo ID. But Darren Hughes, of the Electoral Reform Society (ERS), said “these plans will leave tens of thousands of legitimate voters voiceless”.
Millions do not have a passport or driving licence
Even this is a huge understatement because over 3.5 million people do not have a passport or a driving license. It is easy to fall into this category: many people who can drive may have had their licence suspended for medical reasons such like diabetes, glaucoma or epilepsy and the production of an out-of-date Photo ID is not going to work.
Who are the victims of this draconian law? It will be the lower strata in society, the natural labour voter and Tories are hoping that more marginal seats become Tory dominated. “When millions of people lack photo ID”, saysDarren Hughes, of the Electoral Reform Society, “these mooted plans risk raising the drawbridge to huge numbers of marginalised voters, including many elderly and black and minority ethnic voters.”
Under the scheme, anyone who does not have photographic ID will be able to apply for a free document proving their identity, but can you imagine the administrative chaos if 3.5 million people try to get this document in the three week run up to an election? We can all remember the thousands disenfranchised young voters of 2017 who could not get on the electoral roll.
This scheme has been drafted with one purpose only: to disqualify millions of workers and their families from voting. “There’s evidence that strict voter ID rules in the USA disproportionately disadvantage already marginalised groups” (ERS).
ID system will lead to mistakes, accidents and exclusions
With no evidence of widespread fraud, the effects of this rule change would be catastrophic; most people vote either going to work or returning from work and it is a simple and quick task, currently, with no need to even show a polling card. However, that simple democratic inconvenience will become a burdensome job: ‘no identity no vote’, so back home to find that passport or driving licence with the thought “where did I leave it?”
Forcing people to bring ID to exercise their right to vote will lead inevitably to mistakes, accidents and exclusions. Even a handful of people not voting becaise they left their ID at home would have a far bigger impact on election results than alleged fraud.
The Windrush scandal shows what can happen when millions of people who lack ID are shut out by Government. Proposing mandatory voter ID checks means there’s a risk of repeating those mistakes – this time affecting equality at the ballot box. Looking at who has a full driving license in England paints a concerning picture – with black and mixed communities far less likely to possess one: white people are most likely to hold a driving licence out of all ethnic groups (at 76 per cent), followed by Asian people (62 per cent), while people identifying as mixed race (59 per cent) or Black (52 per cent) are the least likely to hold a driving licence.
Almost no-one got free ID cards
While ministers have promised a free identification card from local councils on request, this simply represents another barrier to voting that will put many off – with large variations likely in terms of how easy the cards are to acquire. Some forms of free ID were made available in trials testing this policy in May but figures show that almost no one got one. That was unsurprising given that, in many cases, a would-be voter had to turn up to a council office (Monday – Friday 9.00-17.00), fill in forms and get someone of “high standing” in your area to sign it.
The government trialled mandatory ID at the 2018 English local elections in Gosport, Swindon, Woking, Watford and Bromley, where voters were required to bring a form of identification, and with each area testing different restrictions. According to the 2011 census, the elderly, people from ethnic minority backgrounds and less well-off are least likely to hold forms of photo ID. Yet, none of the trial areas had a significantly older, poorer or ethnically diverse population compared to the national average. The people most likely to be excluded by voter ID simply didn’t live in the areas voter ID was tested.
Voter impersonation is incredibly rare
Requirements to show ID at polling stations would only stop people pretending to be somebody else in order to cast one fake vote. This is an incredibly rare crime because it is such a slow, clunky way to steal an election – and requires levels of organisation that would be easy to spot and prevent. Without knowing the result, you can’t work out how many hundreds or thousands of votes you need to steal: if you steal too many it will be obvious, but if you don’t steal enough it makes no difference at all. Finding enough real people on the electoral register who won’t be casting their ballot is a problem for fakers. If anyone whose vote has been stolen tries to vote, it instantly reveals the fraud and investigations begin. A large team is required to go around all the polling stations to cast hundreds or thousands of votes without being spotted going in the same one twice.
The Tories have not instigated any laws that would stop foreign governments or companies setting up fake business in the UK so it can funnel money to the Conservative cause, especially if this is carried out before a general election is called. So Tory treasurers are seeking foreign sugar-daddies now in the knowledge that a general election is imminent. At the last election in 2017 false accounting of electoral expenditure led to the trials of Tory candidates and their agents many were upset that the investigations had took so long that the culprits did not face the maximum sentence which was for the MP to vacate their seat.
This is not the only method that the Tories will use to rig the election the Boundary Commission claim to be impartial in deciding what the size of a constituency is false. The Boundary Commission uses electoral rolls to calculate a “even” distribution of voters but these records are inaccurate the total number of UK Parliamentary electors decreased by 372,000 (0.8%) between December 2017 and December 2018, and yet the population is growing with more elderly living longer. The problem with electoral rolls is the transient nature of working class households, with time-limited rental agreements and temporary nature of employment up to 6% of the electoral roll is wrong this is more prevalent in urban areas with higher levels of private rented accommodation.
Boundary Commission juggling constituencies
So the Boundary Commission is given carte-blanche to decide the shape of the constituencies creating what was a once marginal seat into a Tory certainty by attaching rural blocks with no connection to the urban constituency even merging areas across local government boundaries. Instead of using the electoral rolls the Boundary Commission should use data from the census to get a fair distribution.
With all this vote rigging the Tories may think that any future election is in the bag, but this is a pipe dream. Labour has to take this threat to democracy and turn it on its head. Local Labour Parties should be out on the door campaigning for voter registration and recruiting new members it is possible to become a one million-member party.
October 17, 2019
