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Ten Million Voters Still Don’t Know They Need Voter ID: Rishi Sunak’s Government accused of trying to “gerrymander” the next general election by making it harder for certain groups to vote (bylinetimes.com)

submitted 9 months ago by 0x815@feddit.de to c/unitedkingdom

7 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A recent poll found that 22% of UK voters are still not aware that they will need to carry a form of photographic ID, which is a requirement after Rishi Sunak’s Government brought in a new law forcing voters to carry one of a limited number of approved IDs in order to vote.

The legislation was rushed through despite almost no evidence of in-person voting fraud in the UK.

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[–] palordrolap@kbin.social 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Jacob Rees-Mogg, one of the Toriest of Tories, actually admitted that they'd shot themselves in the foot (he may even have used those exact words) by introducing voter ID at the last elections; a larger contingent of the Conservative-voting public than for other parties was unable to vote due to not having the requisite ID.

Many Conservative voters are scared shut-in curtain-twitchers who think the world's gone mad (I mean they're not wrong on that count, I speak as a shut-in myself), but that fear, for various reasons, makes them keep voting Conservative. Kind of hard to get ID if all you do is stay at home and your only way of staying informed is to read the Mail and Express every day, it would seem.

Thus, I would have thought the Cons would have found some excuse to get rid of it before the next lot of elections.

But then, that might mean getting the whole party to agree that it was a mistake rather than the occasional stopped clock.

[–] Tweak 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I was thinking the same, like I know of a few wealthy landowners (likely Tory voters) who do not have a driving license or passport.

[–] echodot 4 points 9 months ago

I don't understand that, if I was wealthy I'd take the opportunity to spend as much time out of the UK as possible.

[–] MonsterMonster@lemmy.world 10 points 9 months ago

There are many of the opinion that voter ID is a solution for a problem that barely exists. This article is an interesting insight.

Voter ID has been described as a poisoned cure.

[–] EinfachUnersetzlich@lemm.ee 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Gerrymandering is changing electoral boundaries to improve the chances of the ruling party.

Voter ID seems to work fine in Northern Ireland too. The thing with in-person voting fraud is that it's incredibly difficult to detect.

[–] echodot 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Well they brought in voter ID last election and it didn't significantly change the outcome of the election so I would say that that is itself evidence that voter fraud is not happening. Since if it was this ID would have prevented it and we would have noticed a significant difference in the results.

[–] Tweak 3 points 9 months ago

Exactly. This is not gerrymandering.

However it is also unnecessary. You say it's hard to detect in person voter fraud, however every professional analysis of voter fraud has determined that it does not happen in any significant manner. The sole purpose of this is to prevent voting, not to prevent fraudulent voting.