I posted this on Twitter this morning:
ITV reports “polling station tellers in Oxfordshire say "large numbers" of voters were being turned away, reporting that between 10-25% were unable to vote.” There was almost no voter fraud in the UK. There is now, and it is officially sanctioned. https://t.co/ltcyusjL62
— Richard Murphy (@RichardJMurphy) May 5, 2023
I am unapologetic if my anger is apparent.
I am quite willing to accept that the absence of detected voter fraud in the UK did not prove there was none. I am equally willing to believe that the amount of such fraud was tiny and almost certainly utterly immaterial.
That is no longer true. Large numbers of people were denied an opportunity to vote yesterday, and many would not have returned with voter ID, even if they possessed it. Democracy failed as a result.
Of course it can be said that this was due to this being the first time voter ID was required, but what is very clear is that the message that ID was required did not get through, despite a lot being spent in an attempt to communicate the fact.
And what we do not know is how many did not even try to vote because of this requirement.
All we can say is that democracy took a massive step backwards yesterday. The young, the old, the poorest and the most vulnerable in particular were denied access to polling stations. That was a deliberate move to reduce the franchise.
That is the reduction in suffrage since 1832.
First they came for those they thought no one cared about.
Who will they come for next?
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This country is horrible in too many respects Richard, thank heavens for you and those who contribute here. I did a postal vote, but my partner went to the booth and was ordered around in a less than pleasant way, to take off their glasses etc and hadn’t realised photo ID had been required and would have been turned away had I not forewarned them.
Guessing: poor people less likely to have photo-ID than richer people, young less likely to have photo-ID than older people. Two groups more likely to not vote Tory have been disenfranchised. Tory plan is thus working. I’d also hazard a guess that the people turned away are less likely to complain to, for example, their MP.
I notice that Liebore and its muppet-leader are silent on this. The conclusion being that they are happy to see a reduction in the number of voters, mirroring the reality that they are/were happy to reduce the number of Liebore members to a comformist/B.Liarite rump. UK serfs and peasants are expected to conform and tug their forelocks – as they will do en-mass tomorrow – a national forelock tugging day.
The last significant voter fraud event in the Uk occured in the 1992 election. Tories in a couple of key seats went around old people’s homes “helping” old people fill in postal votes. This has been documented & was sufficient to give Major/Minor his thin victory.
The UK, an increasingly undemocratic and pathetic place. I was in the European Parliemant yesterday talking about community energy – I apologised for the fact that the project I am involved with is in the Uk – lots of symnpathetic faces, people over here pity the Brits.
This is neo-Facism in action. The Tories surely have instigated secret research into the effects of voter suppression to know what groups to target. Will this ever see the light of day – come on you whistleblower.
Who is (was) driving the Tory voter suppression programme. A final grift from Johnson?
Last night unintended consequences were reported.
Will the MSM investigate voter suppression. IMO not very likely, although its a huge story.
It’s not this country that is failing, nor everyday people.
It’s politics that is failing and politicians who have fallen for political science – playing for percentages in the margins and promoting identity politics to get the people to fall out with each other (fascism).
That is my opinion. We deserve better than this. Notwithstanding a few of them none of them are worth a light. The Guardian reports 38 Degree research that MPs are 4 times more likely to be landlords than the general public which earns them over £10K a year over their MP/ministerial pay. This includes Labour MPs and Lib Dems.
In essence what we’ve got is predominantly a cabal of well-off people deciding on what we get as citizens – and look at what they have delivered – austerity!!
As I’ve said, I cannot find anything good in a system like that and I believe I have the right to not only take no part in it but also to sadly seek its destruction and overthrow with something better via any means possible. String words i know but in my case only words.
I was thinking the other day about slavery, and how Africans ripped from their land and their culture, renamed with Western names and made the chattels of thieves essentially had their history (which contained their identity) destroyed. No wonder many BAME people want to discover what was taken from them. Wouldn’t anybody?
Similarly, what our modern politicians are part of – whether by intent, greed or stupidity- is a concerted effort to destroy/ negate the history of money, the history of social progression and the history of the state in order that it be supplanted with false market narratives whose only aim is unopposed exploitation.
Thus, for me then our ‘democracy’ is invalid. It is not supportable. It has to be replaced. This voter ID policy is part of that invalidity.
Notable that, in these ongoing days of Covid, there was also no accommodation for the ill and immuno-compromised who weren’t allowed to vote when masked due to the ID requirements.
Also, what if you were infected by Covid but still wanted to vote? You wouldn’t be able to weak a mask to reduce the risk to others in the polling station. I suspect that quite a lot of electoral staff will come down with Covid next week…
I was staggered by this
It would have been so easy to set up an outdoor space with shelter and a fan to check ID for those wearing masks.
There should be campaign to do this for the GE by a non-political organisation with national reach at grassroots level – maybe the church or an ecumenical initiative? It could be run under the rubric of pastoral care, on a parish basis, lobbied by leaders at the highest levels. Someone tell Justin Welby…
Joanna
Don’t play on their pitch.
If voter ID is a political measure to disenfranchise the citizens, it is wrong. Making the measure “easier” or “safer” merely enables their fascism.
Agreed, entirely
Anne, I’m assuming that the current govt is unlikely to drop the voter ID requirement at the next GE to be fair to immunosuppressed people!
Contest voter ID by all means. Covid may not be an issue in 18 months time, or maybe there will be something worse. Either way, it’s a contingency and there should be a practical plan to hand to cover it. I’ve seen voter intimidation on a scale unimaginable – currently – in the UK; an equal right vote safely under all circumstances matters.
The Tory apologists keep telling us photo ID is standard in most democracies.
So is automatic registration.
In those countries the state issues Identity cards which have to be used for a range of things. Here it’s use whatever is to hand and if you want to take the trouble, you can get one on application.
It really isn’t the same and is very much the sort of measures used by the American Republican party who are the model for the Conservative party.
At a time when privately owned businesses are legally permitted to force you into all sorts of elaborate identification processes, complex security routines and IT companies monitor your every action, before selling the information to god knows who, I am baffled as to why there still appears to be a political census that a National ID card is an offence against liberty.
Such a card would render the current Tory voter suppression scam useless.
I have no problem with a National ID card. For me the problem is requiring it to be carried at all times, thereby criminalising people for a simple administrativ error.
I am appalled, angry, and outraged by the requirement for voter ID.
It is gerrymandering.
I do have a suggestion if people wish to be sure the right person votes. Why not photograph voters when they cast a vote? Modern technology and all that. Then, if a second person tries to vote there will be a record which can be investigated. Photos can, and should be, destroyed after a period (they are only electronic bits).
Of course this doesn’t address any possible problems. And would the police really investigate given that their numbers have been decimated by the Conservatives?
But the availability of better checks to avoid (largely non-existent) voter fraud, proves this is indeed gerrymandering.
It is not possible to have multiple votes for the same name/address combination since they score off your name when you turn up, and would immediately see if someone else tried to pretend to be you.
Postal voting is much easier to subvert IMO. To subvert the on-the-day voting process, you would need to know people in your constituency who are not going to vote, so you could pretend to be them without being spotted. You would also need to be lucky at not being recognised, since in my experience, the voting halls tend to have the same people running them all day long, so would possibly remember if they had seen you turn up before.
Still, other democracies do indeed require voter ID, and even national ID cards. If we consider those countries to be perfectly reasonable places, then what exactly is our problem in trying the same route? I think they are wrong – it smacks of the country not by default trusting its citizens, but it is still an interesting question to think about.
Voter ID has been rigged to make sure those I noted will not likely have available ID
Everyone has official ID in most countries that have this rule
You miss that essential point
“It is not possible to have multiple votes for the same name/address combination since they score off your name when you turn up, and would immediately see if someone else tried to pretend to be you.”
But someone could fraudulently vote first. That was the scenario I was considering. If you then turn up you have a problem.
But better to have no checks unless there is a problem, which there isn’t.
I was merely pointing out that, even if checks are needed, there are better ways than insisting on ID.
But there is no evidence that there is a problem
This kind of voter suppression comes straight from the US, where Greg Palast has been documenting it for years. The next stage is to start closing polling stations due to “low footfall”. No prizes for guessing the kind of areas that that will be happening in first.
I am horrified by reports that people have been told that “you do not look like this photo” and there is no appeal.
Just possession of the document is not enough.
This has massive implications ….
Agreed
People who have been denied the vote have been told to get in touch with their councils.
Very concerning.
The only possible response (if you have the time…) is to return with all of the possible documentation that might be required (driving licence, DBS checks, bank statements, council tax and other bills, passport, etc etc) and to document the refusal in writing. Very concerning as the ‘meta-rules’ (ie rules about the rules) have not been published or made available.
I’m curious. Would you level the same accusations against all EU countries? Every one of which has voter ID laws. The vast majority of developed countries have voter ID laws. Are they all fascist?
Voter ID laws have existed in Northern Ireland since 2002.
Where were your howls of protest over these ‘fascist’ regimes?
No, that is their tradition and they make ID accessible
This is not our tradition and we have denied access to ID
If you can’t spot the difference you need to educate yourself
More likely, you are a fascist troll
“This is not our tradition “
This is not a valid argument. If it was then most things you want to change would remain in place forever.
In a country with an unwritten constitution – and this is a constitutional issue – that’s a pretty bizarre argument
Mr Bielsa,
The common law tradition is itself just an extension of established custom. More important here, the introduction of ID has been presented as the solution to a voter fraud problem that nobody with any specialist knowledge or expertise in the area appears to believe exists. It is a problem simply asserted without telling proof, against the long established evidence; by a political party (the Conservatives) with a vested interest in the results.
The Conservative Party relies increasingly on the disproportional support of the elderly, a sample of the population least likely to object to ID, and most likely to use it (I give you the gerontocratic argument: ‘if you have nothing to hide, what is the problem’ – but you will receive short schrift if you asked them to publish their tax affairs!); this is a declining pool of voters that in the medium term at least (if not sooner) is less likely to produce favourable voting majorities for the Party. Something must be done if the status quo ante is to be preserved for the Conservatives! The Conservative Party wishes to manage the problem, and put off the adverse consequences, by making it more difficult for the population which less likely either to have, or wish to have ID, to vote. It is a simple ruse. This is an act of pure electoral self-interest. It has no other purpose for government.
These two factors; the age profile of voters receptive to ID (favouring the Conservative Party), and the lack of persuasive evidence that there is a real voter fraud problem in Britain, quite robustly establish the nature of the problem here; the efforts of the Conservative Party to preserve its electoral advantages, when the demographics may be against it in the near future. Add to that the efforts of the Conservative Party to change constituency boundaries in ways likely to favour it, and perhaps we can all see where this is going.
Notice also that the FPTP system is vital to keeping the Conservatives in power. As I keep repeating, because of the FPTP system, the Conservative Party is able to produce an 80 seat majority in Parliament (2019) with the votes of ony 24% of the registered electorate – less than 1-in-4 of those entitled to vote. This is not a majority of anything substantive; indeed it isn’t a decisive or authoritative representation of the opinions of the British people, on any grounds whatsover. It is a complete misrepresentation of the politics of the British people; that is uncontestable. It is a compelling argument for proportional representation, because the disproportionate exercise of great statute and executive political power by a Government that represents less than 1-in-4 of the public is totally unjustifiable, on any grounds; a constitutional wrong.
As you wrote recently, Richard: repetition in politics is important. The attempt of the Conservative Party to manipulate opinion, the news agenda, voting rights, and the voting system; frankly to rig the results permanently in its own interests is really quite obvious. Hence I feel entitled to repeat the facts on FPTP.
In Scotland Holyrood and local elections use proportional representation (a devolution solution decided, ironically by Westminster in an attempt to shoot the ‘independence’ fox). The consequence? The Conservative Party is now effectively unelectable in Scotland as a potential Government; and exposed the Party as a risible collection of blusterers, bullies and inarticulate no-hopers, propped up by a voting gerontocracy even more out of touch than their politicians. The May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak governments, which the Scottish Conservatives have supported doggedly by effectively pretending Westminster Government doesn’t exist, merely compounds their endless uneletcability. Support for the Labour Party simply collapsed. Even with all the SNP disasters, there is no compelling argument to elect the Opposition in Scotland, because they clearly are not, and cannot be trusted: and proportional representation has given the Scottish elector a modicum of control: although with the de Hondt – pro-Party – system in operation in Holyrood, insufficient for the voters to prevent the Political Parties foisting their unelectable Party Hacks and failures on the protesting electors, often in leadership roles. Proportional system works sufficiently effectively in Scotland to render the politicians more acutely aware of the electors’ power; and the electors are more easily able to see the degree to which they are still being manipulated by political parties.
Thanks John
So will people give up or be enraged to register and vote the truth twisters out. Usa has voter registration drives, one for Labour to mimic. Great conversational opener…..
That is absurd
There is no problem this solves
Why waste money then?
Did I hear this morning that Starmer says he will get rid of voter ID after he becomes PM next year? Another promise for him to abandon.
Richard,
The Tory strategy of restricting voters is straight out of the USA Republicans hand book.
The difference between the UK Labour attitude and the Democrats is that for example Stacy Abrams led a campaign in Georgia to register voters and won the state for Biden in 2020.
Here Labour silence is unforgiveable. Regrettably Labour are not committed to repealing this change in the law.
The statistics are alarming as above if true: I decided to say I hadn’t got the ID to see what happened. I was told that I would be counted if I hadn’t got the ID and that the failures would be passed up the line so that there would be an overview of nationwide voting failures.
Apparently one woman’s bus pass was refused because it didn’t have the word ‘approved’ on it: this appears to fly in the face of common sense.
As pointed out above this does not take account of those who were turned away before they got into the station (I did without showing my ID) or didn’t bother so there remains still a massive problem of completeness when trying to size the problem.
I am alarmed by the tone of Richard’s statement ‘first they came’ but I fear that it is all too accurate.
I signifies to me that the government no longer trusts its citizens the way that it once did. And this should concern those who consider themselves to be citizens.
The government-citizen relationship needs to change. And that change begins by us recognising the problem.
Saw a message from a police woman whose warrant card was not considered enough to enable her to vote on the way home from work. Needless to say, she didn’t go back.
Amazing