come again?

Yeah you heard correct, if it isn’t repealed by the next Labour government and it becomes permanent taking ID when you go to vote will become as normal as remembering to take your oyster card before a bus journey.

I don’t support the new rule because I believe that it will represent an unnecessary obstacle to voting for no good reason.

However to suggest that this represents some sort of move towards a police state, and darkly talk about the untrustworthiness of the Met, in relation to this, is absurd.

I don’t know if there is one single EU country which doesn’t require voter ID, would it be fair to suggest that the EU is some sort of police state?

I don’t understand what the resistance to ID is and making sure the results are reliable? Even with ID people will still be told who to vote for or be paid to vote for someone.

It’s a matter of balance. If you have some numbers on voter fraud that would be helpful.

But in the link I posted we are taking about thousands being turned away in just the trial areas against under a hundred cases of fraud across the whole country. If 7% don’t have the required id to vote that’s millions of people.

I entered this thread thinking voter id, what’s the problem, reducing corruption is a good thing. I have now changed my mind. So I’m open to additional information

Finally isn’t postal votes the big worry for fraud? This measures seems to increase postal voting. That makes no sense

Here is the link to the 2005 case were 900 postal votes were consisted suspicious and lead to a prosecution

https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2010/sep/06/men-jailed-attempted-postal-vote-fraud

I don’t understand what the resistance to ID is and making sure the results are reliable? Even with ID people will still be told who to vote for or be paid to vote for someone.

So if it’s not going to make a difference why go to the trouble?

So if it’s not going to make a difference why go to the trouble?

It’s not as if the government has a track record of pointless distractions from bigger issues, is it?

It’s not as if the government has a track record of pointless distractions from bigger issues, is it?

Well obviously, I was asking in the context of Damascus’ post.

In principle it’s a good thing, in reality there will be lots of unintended consequences and its a solution to a problem we don’t have. If we want to make this country less open to fraud and criminality let’s start with the behaviour of our current politicians. There’s plenty of real problems there that do need addressing.

Finally isn’t postal votes the big worry for fraud?

I would have thought so. During an election campaign many years ago I took a phone call from someone who claimed that their wife worked in a care home for the elderly, apparently she witnessed the manager organising the postal votes of the residents on mass to support the Tory candidate.

I passed the information onto the Labour Party election agent and to my surprise he said that he would only follow it up if Labour lost by a handful of votes. They didn’t and it wasn’t pursued.

Unless there is a good reason I don’t think postal voting should be encouraged. Some people complain endlessly about politicians and then are too lazy to get their sorry arses down to the local polling station every few years to make a personal effort for democracy.

I think election day should always be on a Sunday btw, choosing a busy weekday makes no sense at all imo. Especially as schools are often used!

We have national ID here, the cheapest photo ID available (National ID card) was about 6 quid IIRC, and easily available from several sources.
Your driving licence and passport also include the same data, and are relatively easily available, if you meet the criteria. They’re also cheap (~30 quid for a driving licence, ~60 for passport).

Even inserting myself into the system as an adult was incredibly easy.

 If you have some numbers on voter fraud that would be helpful.

@ampthill

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/may/23/police-open-inquiries-allegations-electoral-fraud-uk

https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/kirklees-calderdale-councils-ordered-crack-6477840

This is an old article, but highlights the issues raised at the time.

The problem with fraud is you only find fraud when you invest in counter fraud. If you have little or no counter fraud in place then fraud isnt a problem until it is. So there’s no real numbers to back it up, just reviews and reports.

The more you look for it, the more you find.

Historically there hasn’t been any real trained counter fraud in local authorities in voting. It’s only when someone complains after the fact and if it didn’t have an effect on the outcome then it’s sometimes ignored. For example labour candidate did x, y and z but the conservatives won. Historically the only avenue was to refer suspicions to the police. I think that’s changing now, investments have been made in anticipation of this new rule.

With regards to postal votes I suspect its one step at a time and that will develop as they understand the data and how much fraud they suspect. It will be based on resource to risk.

But in its final report of electoral fraud in the UK, the Commission rejected calls to restrict access to postal voting – which has been at the centre of many of the allegations – saying it would prevent many innocent people from casting their vote.

Personally I don’t see what the difference is to preventing innocent people from voting. It should be a blanket policy but it’s harder and more costly to introduce with postal votes.

There isn’t a financial barrier to obtaining photo ID, but there is a knowledge barrier and a lack of understanding. Again, I don’t think they’ve done a very good job on advertising and information upfront.

https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/electoral-commission-statement-sir-eric-pickles-review-electoral-fraud

The scheme would allow voters who do not hold any of the existing forms of identity to apply for a “Voter Card” which would be issued free of charge to any elector

Implementing a Voter Card scheme across Great Britain would cost between £1.8m and £10.8m per annum, depending on the method of implementation.

https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/i-am-a/voter/voter-id/accepted-forms-photo-id

If you don’t have an accepted form of photo ID

You can apply for a free voter ID document, known as a Voter Authority Certificate, if:

you don’t have an accepted form of photo ID

you’re not sure whether your photo ID still looks like you

you’re worried about using an existing form of ID for any other reason, such as the use of a gender marker

You need to register to vote before applying for a Voter Authority Certificate.

Find out how to apply for a Voter Authority Certificate

The deadline to apply for a Voter Authority Certificate for the local elections in England on 4 May 2023 is 5pm on Tuesday 25 April 2023.

With regards to postal votes I suspect its one step at a time and that will develop as they understand the data and how much fraud they suspect. It will be based on resource to risk.

Really? Lets think about the risk vs reward ratio for the criminal for a second.
Outside of a handful of seats to shift the vote you will need a decent number of votes.
Lets take Ernies ” care home for the elderly” example.
So its quite easy to nick the registrations if you are in charge of the home since you can pass round the form to the residents and then whoever doesnt fill it in do it on their behalf.
However now we come to the vote so lets say there are 20 residents and only 5 chose to vote leaving us with 15.
Either I need to pop down to the polling station throughout the day hoping the shifts are very short and they dont recognise me or I need to recruit agents to vote for me.
Or I can do a postal vote.

One is a shitload lower risk and easier than the other.
So why has the other been locked down first?

@dissonance

One is a shitload lower risk and easier than the other.  So why has the other been locked down first?

I don’t think nursing homes have the numbers to influence voting. I don’t think reading the report that is what they are concerned with but I totally get your point. It’s just harder to implement ID into postal voting and it will have a significant cost and create barriers to voting.

If you read the commissioners report it specifically mentions

the Commission has launched a study into concerns that some South Asian communities – notably those with roots in parts of Pakistan and Bangladesh

Without wanting to derail this subject and fuel the fire, but imagine the power and influence a religion has over it’s flock, especially if some (not all) of those have not been educated in the UK or past  the age of 14 years old.

Imagine if those signed postal votes are just handed over without a candidate picked? Either because your asked to or you get paid for them?

Imagine if multiple establishments in a small area all want the same person elected.

And if that area doesn’t have a huge majority? A small number can shift the outcome.

Picking Halifax (Calderdale) as an example as it was mentioned in the report, the winner had just 3199 more votes. If its a full party shift that might only need 1600 people (give or take) to make a change.

https://www.calderdale.gov.uk/council/democracy/electionresults/results.jsp?election=517&area=43

It doesn’t have to be postal, they can be told who to vote for in person but is that fraud or canvassing?

But the way people choose to vote is standard across the UK (averaging) so if you have small pockets where customer behavior is vastly different, large numbers of postal requests have come in at the same time and you’ve had surprising outcomes then you know where to concentrate your investigative resources. It will all be planned and carefully calculated. (i hope)

I don’t think nursing homes have the numbers to influence voting.

Well yes but it was a random example taken from just above as an example of how rigging postal votes makes more sense with regards to your claims about risk.

It’s just harder to implement ID into postal voting and it will have a significant cost and create barriers to voting.

And yet until recently postal voting was restricted. Its only since 2001 that people have been able to request it easily.
So on the one hand we have:
Postal voting is the better target for fraud (indeed the one case we have of serious fraud was postal votes).
Postal voting was heavily controlled in the past.
Older people are more likely to postal vote.
vs
Rigging votes in person really is hard work.
New restrictions are being imposed which didnt exist in the past.
The rules about the id cards favour older people.
And then add
Older people are more likely to vote tory.

It looks rather dubious doesnt it?

It doesn’t have to be postal, they can be told who to vote for in person but is that fraud or canvassing?

Its definitely problematic but guess what the requirement for photo id doesnt address it. Are you spotting the pattern yet?

I like daveylad’s posts. They remind me why I no longer use Facebook or Twitter. Unusual that they post their moronic shit here, but I guess we all need a hobby.

They are an obvious troll, always put in a point that is clearly bollocks and then you never hear from them again on the thread. Not sure why anyone falls for it really.

I do however always think how slack it is when I vote as I could go in at 07:00 and vote for any one of my neighbours and then go back at 18:30 and vote for myself as probably talk to a different person or if the same person they wouldn’t remember me after 12 hours of seeing 1,000s of other people. But as everyone has said if that happened a lot the people turning up later finding they had already voted but be reporting it which they are not.
So while a very big issue in theory the practice doesn’t hold up.

As to whether it puts anyone off/stops them being able to vote – need to look at the turnout and compare with previous data I suppose.

Unless there is a good reason I don’t think postal voting should be encouraged. Some people complain endlessly about politicians and then are too lazy to get their sorry arses down to the local polling station every few years to make a personal effort for democracy

@ernielynch Could you elaborate on what would be ‘a good reason’?

Unless there is a good reason I don’t think postal voting should be encouraged. Some people complain endlessly about politicians and then are too lazy to get their sorry arses down to the local polling station every few years to make a personal effort for democracy

I don’t understand. You sound like you’re making a case *for* postal voting. Anything that makes the process easier is a good thing.

Could you elaborate on what would be ‘a good reason’?

How about disability, frailty, away on holiday, long work shift? I’m opened to suggestions.

“I can’t be bothered to drag my arse away from the settee and miss some telly once every few years” doesn’t sound like a particularly good reason.

Presumably the “easiest” way to vote would be to let people do it on line. But I am not convinced that the easiest way should be encouraged, a sense of involvement, participation, and connection with the democratic process, as well as a sense of civic duty, is obviously desirable.

It is for the reason of emphasising civic duty that many countries make voting compulsory. Australia for example despite only issuing fairly small fines for non-compliance has one of the highest voter turnouts in the world – 92% at its last general election.

I am not necessarily making the case for compulsory voting just emphasising that it should be seen as an important civic duty. Especially in a society which seems to endlessly moan about the quality of politicians. Get involved instead of just moaning and leaving it to others.

What Ernie describes in a care home I have seen happen

@damascus both your links indicate that it’s postal voting that’s the risk. So why make the change to voting in person?

@ampthill

@damascus both your links indicate that it’s postal voting that’s the risk. So why make the change to voting in person?

I suspect because its easier and cheaper to implement and by leaving another option it’s not putting more barriers in to stop people voting.

They will probably review how this change has influenced voting habbits and then decide what to do about postal votes. They will probably call it an agile launch.

My personal view is that if they say you need ID to vote then the format should be irrelevant. If they can’t implement ID into postal votes then remove postal votes.

Seems legit.

Cheating bastards.
Tory party tells people in Labour stronghold they don't need ID to vote in local elections https://t.co/X1VKUSTjve

— Ted Smith #BrexitBrokeBritain (@TedUrchin) April 26, 2023

Also…

4% of voters without voter ID apply through scheme

Which is what I think the Tories had in mind.

Cheating bastards.

It appears to be just a very embarrassing mistake to me. Doing it deliberately wouldn’t make much sense as it was always going to be spotted by everyone, including by Electoral Commission, who know about it.

None of which is going to them favours. Plus it was also incorrect information to their own supporters. It’s Tory supporters who are more likely to read Tory elections leaflets, not Labour supporters.

Edit: What is definitely deliberately misleading is the suggestion that voters should vote Conservative so that they can continue to do their “positive work” for Norwich – apparently the Tories have not won a single seat on the City Council since 2008.

The only thing they are likely to be continuing doing is “**** all” for Norwich.

The rules about the id cards favour older people.
And then add
Older people are more likely to vote tory.

Possibly; that’s been the traditional assumption, however it’s always been assumed that people born during the 60’s and 70’s and later, and going through further education, would tend to be more socialist or at least left-leaning, and obviously are now ‘older people’, so how are the voters going to vote now? I know all my contemporaries are Lib-dem or Labour, they’re all in their 60’s and early 70’s now, and all have photo ID, driver’s licences and passports.
I’d be interested to know if a bus pass counts – I’ve just received mine, and it’s a photo card; it doesn’t have my address on, but has my name and a much better photo of me than my drivers license has, which the post office took.

I’d be interested to know if a bus pass counts

Yes. Older Person’s Bus Pass funded by the Government of the United Kingdom

The introduction of Voter ID has been shown to reduce turnout. This is bad for our democracy.

Today I raised my concerns about the policy with the Minister in the Urgent Question debate. pic.twitter.com/e0qewlKxn7

— David Davis (@DavidDavisMP) April 27, 2023

I thought it was particularly helpful of the Conservatives to put leaflets through doors in a constituency in Norwich stating photo ID isn’t needed…. in a predominantly Labour voting constituancy. Classy.

Ah Bin Dun. Soz!

It appears to be just a very embarrassing mistake to me.

That may well be true.

But that being the case, what are they doing to correct it I wonder. Reckon there will be a second round of flyers?

Doing it deliberately wouldn’t make much sense

Doing it deliberately makes total sense. This has been going on for years, trotting out bollocks and then issuing a retraction as quietly as possible. The damage has been done, the message is out there, success.

But that being the case, what are they doing to correct it I wonder. Reckon there will be a second round of flyers?

You should have followed the link through – apparently there will indeed be a second round of flyers apologizing for their mistake. I can’t see how this cockup has done them any favours.

Simon Jones, chairman of the Norwich Conservative Federation, said the leaflet had been “centrally produced and printed” from the Tory party’s HQ’s Campaign Toolkit.

Mr Jones added: “As a local Conservative Association, we delivered a small number of these before realising their mistake but suspended delivery as soon as the issue was identified.

“We apologise, unreservedly, to the residents that received these and will be contacting them to correct the error as quickly as possible.”

I suspect the truth is that it was probably the result of an out of date Tory ‘campaign toolkit’. Which obviously exposes Central Office’s incompetence and also the local Tories’s incompetence for not noticing it.

Although I wouldn’t be surprised if some divvy Tory Party worker didn’t keep up with current affairs and wasn’t even aware of the new ID rule this election. Many of them aren’t really interested in politics and boring stuff like that.

I engaged with “Burnley Conservatives” on Facebook over their claim that

“New research from the Commission shows that 76% of people now know they need to bring photo ID to vote in a polling station, compared to 22% in December and 63% in February.”

So 24% – a quarter of the electorate – still don’t know?

Don’t you think that’s problematic? What are you doing to address it?

One legitimate voter turned away from the polling stations is one too many and an assault on democracy.

it would be problematic if the 24% figure hadn’t dropped already. Every piece of election literature (and I include all parties in this) has contained information telling voters ID is required. And that’s alongside awareness campaigns from both the council and government bodies.
This fb post is just another example of what we’re doing to address people not knowing 🙂

What has it dropped to? Has it dropped to zero? If it hasn’t, that’s a problem.

I couldn’t tell you what it’s dropped to as it was the electoral commission who initially published the 76% figure. We’re not sure what that figure is now.
On the last part “oh has it now” [ref: literature] … simple answer to that is, yes.

If you can’t tell me and you’re not sure, how do you know it’s dropped at all? What lower percentage of eligible voters who get turned away from the booths would you consider acceptable? 23%? 1%? We’re a week away, how long does it take for a teenager to get photo ID?

The simple answer to “has it now” is “no it hasn’t.” Your page won’t let me post images, but voters in Norfolk received Tory fliers explicitly stating that photo ID wouldn’t be needed. I appreciate that this was (hopefully) a mistake, but it’s demonstrably incorrect to state that “every piece of literature… ” etc has informed voters.

it’s not demonstratively incorrect to assert that all the election literature off all parties within Burnley and Padiham has contained information stating people need ID to vote. That’s a fact.
The links you’ve put are from Norwich 🙄 and as you say you “appreciate it was hopefully a mistake”.
As for the figures I never stated they had changed. I said that given this is old news, the figures in this article *may* have changed. Which would be a good assumption given the above point about all election literature in our borough informing voters about the changes.

You didn’t say “all the election literature off[sic] all parties within Burnley and Padiham,” you said “Every piece of election literature.” Given that the only literature I’ve received in Padiham has been a flyer from Labour, you would be correct so far. I can’t comment on the literature that Burnley Tories are putting out because I haven’t seen any, so I’ll take you at your word here.

<< As for the figures I never stated they had changed. I said that given this is old news, the figures in this article *may* have changed. >>

Bollocks, you didn’t say anything of the sort. You said “it would be problematic if the 24% figure hadn’t dropped already.”
Has it dropped?

And again – do you think that merely “dropped” is acceptable? Do you think that anything other than ‘zero’ is acceptable?
Your government’s policy is putting a block in front of the demographic most likely to vote against them. Does that not concern you?