Tag Archives: voter ID

Mary Reid

Up to 750,000 people disenfranchised in General Election

By Mary Reid | Thu 19th September 2024 - 3:36 pm

The Electoral Commission report on Voter ID in the General Election found that 16,000 would-be voters were turned away by polling officers because they did not have approved ID. But the picture is much worse than that, because many people simply did not turn up at the polling station because of the ID rules, or were stopped by the greeter and never returned. In fact, the Electoral Commission reckons that 750,000 people might not have voted in the General Election because of the need for Voter ID.

The report also found that while most people were aware of the requirement for Voter ID, 29% of people aged 18- 24 did not know about it and 24% of people from ethnic minority communities were unaware. In general, the impact was felt greatest by those two groups plus voters in social grade C2DE.

This is a topic I have written about before. On the day after the local elections in 2023, when Voter ID was first introduced, I asked: “Voter ID – did it prevent electoral fraud or did it interfere with voters’ rights?“. The answer came the following month with another report from the Electoral Commission: “14,000 voters turned away – but probably many more“. Then a month later a letter appeared in the press from eminent ethnic minority actors and artists, calling for the abolition of Voter ID because of its disproportionate impact on people of colour: “Actors and artists back the abolition of Voter ID“.

There are two possible responses to the latest findings. Either increase the types of acceptable photographic ID or abolish Voter ID altogether.

The Electoral Commission recommends that “The UK Government should undertake and publish a review of the current list of accepted forms of ID, to identify any additional documents that could be included to improve accessibility for voters.” At the moment travel passes for older people are acceptable but bizarrely those for young people are not. They also suggest that any voter who does not have a acceptable form of ID should be able to take a registered voter with them to the polling station to attest for them.

The other option – embraced by the Lib Dems, is to abolish Voter ID altogether.  Its original purpose was to stop impersonation – when someone fraudulently claims to be someone else and steals their vote. This is a crime, of course, but one that seems to happen extremely rarely. Between 2019 and 2023 only 11 people were convicted of it.

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Mary Reid

Actors and artists back the abolition of Voter ID

By Mary Reid | Fri 26th July 2024 - 12:36 pm

Voter ID was first introduced at the Local Elections in England in 2023. At the time Lib Dems expressed strong reservations about the scheme for two reasons:

  1. Experience in other countries has shown that the requirement for Voter ID amounts to voter suppression, and that it disproportionately affects certain groups, such as those living in poverty and ethnic minorities.
  2. Voter ID is a solution to a problem that barely exists – voter impersonation happens very rarely.

At the time I wrote about my experience of telling at Woking – now proudly a Lib Dem run Council with a new Lib Dem MP. According to the Electoral Commission 14,000 voters were turned away in 2023 in England because of not having the correct ID. However this figure did not include all those who were picked up by greeters outside the polling station and who never returned.

Those elections only affected a proportion of electoral areas and I suggested that up to 40,000 would have been turned away in England if it had been a General Election. But I greatly underestimated. The Guardian reported some research by More in Common that claimed that 400,000 would-be voters across the UK did not vote in this year’s General Election because of the ID rules and practices.

Helen Morgan has been vocal on this issue for some time, and we have reiterated our position recently.

Today a large group of eminent ethnic minority actors, artists and others in the public eye, including Lenny Henry, Anish Kapoor, Adjoa Andoh, David Harewood, Sophie Okonedo and Gary Younge, have sent an open letter to the Prime Minister:

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Mark Valladares

14 September 2023 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Thu 14th September 2023 - 11:55 pm
  • Crumbling Hospitals: Lib Dems call for Rishi Sunak to explain why he ignored crumbling hospitals
  • Sunak breaches rules again: Same old sleaze and scandal as Boris Johnson
  • Liberal Democrats urge the Government to act on Voter ID Scheme

Crumbling Hospitals: Lib Dems call for Rishi Sunak to explain why he ignored crumbling hospitals

Following the report that Rishi Sunak blocked plans to rebuild hospitals with crumbling concrete three years ago, Liberal Democrat Health and Social Care spokesperson Daisy Cooper MP said:

This new revelation is a disgrace. The Prime Minister has put the public’s health and safety at risk for far too long.

It’s

…

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Mary Reid

14,000 voters turned away – but probably many more

By Mary Reid | Fri 23rd June 2023 - 10:12 am

At the time of the local elections last month in England many of us were concerned that voters were being turned away at polling stations because they did not have the required photo ID. I wrote this post at the time: “Voter ID – did it prevent electoral fraud or did it interfere with voters’ rights?”

I was telling for a couple of hours in a neighbouring borough, where a greeter checked everyone’s ID before they entered the polling station. Apparently greeters were employed at 40% of the polling stations. The significance of this is that voters who were turned away outside were not recorded at all – it was only those who got inside and were then turned away who were noted in the stats.

The Electoral Commission has published some preliminary findings with a more detailed report expected later in the year. It says that 14,000 would-be voters were not issued ballot papers – a figure that is worrying in itself – but it does not know how many were caught by the greeters before they stepped inside the polling station.

We also have to remember that this report covers only a proportion of English councils – 260 out of 383 across the UK – and that the turnout at local elections is about half of that at general elections. My rough calculation suggest that the figure of 14,000 could be grossed up to 40,000 if it had been a general election instead.

Back to the hard facts in the report. It seems that 8% of those eligible to vote in May did not know about the ID requirement, but that percentage was even lower amongst ethnic minorities and 18-24 year olds, where a whopping 18% were unaware that they had to produce ID.

The figure of 14,000 does not include those who were initially turned away but who returned later in the day with acceptable ID and were able to vote.

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Caron Lindsay

Thousands denied vote in local elections due to voter ID law

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 20th May 2023 - 2:38 pm

As we start to work out the impact of the Conservatives’ attempt at voter suppression, early analysis shows that at least 10,000 people lost out on the chance to vote in the local elections in May. Figures released by local councils suggest include those refused inside the polling stations and don’t count those turned away by greeters on the door.

From the BBC

David Cowling, a former BBC polling expert who is now a visiting research fellow at King’s College London, also says it must be borne in mind that some voters initially turned away later return with ID.

He says evidence from metropolitan borough councils, and the pilots, suggests around 60% of people initially refused a ballot return with valid ID – producing a rough figure of 0.2% refusals of the votes cast.

“That’s arguably 0.2% fewer people than there should be not participating – but on the other hand, it doesn’t seem to me that the death of democracy is on the agenda either,” he told BBC Radio 4’s More or Less.
He adds, however, that there are “imponderables” in the council data, including the fact that people turned back by so-called greeters outside polling stations were not included in the published figures.

This first outing for voter ID has taken place at a relatively low turnout set of elections. Turnout in the General Election will be higher and potentially more people will lose out on the opportunity to have their say.

This initial analysis comes in the week when Jacob Rees-Mogg basically admitted at the dreadful National Conservative conference that the measures had been introduced to boost Conservative support but he argued that they had lost the party votes:

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Mark Valladares

26 April 2023 – today’s press releases (part 2)

By Mark Valladares | Wed 26th April 2023 - 11:30 pm
  • Chalk streams hit by 14,000 hours of sewage discharges last year
  • ONS figures: Sickness absence days at record high
  • CCHQ inquiry needed into Tory leaflet telling voters they don’t need photo ID
  • Barclay: This Government hasn’t a shred of integrity left

Chalk streams hit by 14,000 hours of sewage discharges last year

  • Chalk streams are known as “England’s rainforest” for animal habitats and unique to England
  • Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey will today visit a chalk stream in Winchester with local dog walkers
  • Fears the amount of sewage dumped into chalk streams may be higher than feared with sewage monitors found to be broken

New analysis by the Liberal Democrats has revealed water companies dumped sewage into England’s chalk streams for a staggering 14,162 hours last year.

There were 2,240 incidents of sewage discharges into chalk streams by five of the country’s water firms: Anglian Water, Southern Water, Thames Water, Wessex Water and Yorkshire Water.

Chalk streams are a unique waterway found primarily in the South of England and Yorkshire. They have been referred to as “England’s rainforest” for their special qualities which allow wildlife and plants to thrive. They are a haven for iconic species like the otter, kingfisher and salmon amongst many others. However they have come under threat from abstraction and sewage.

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Mark Valladares

26 April 2023 – today’s press releases (part 1)

By Mark Valladares | Wed 26th April 2023 - 11:05 pm
  • Brits less likely to swim in the sea due to sewage discharges, poll reveals
  • Police taking over five hours to respond to priority calls
  • Stop Voter ID: Govt are burying their heads in the sand
  • Braverman’s boasts will “ring hollow” for crime victims waiting hours for police to turn up

Brits less likely to swim in the sea due to sewage discharges, poll reveals

A new poll commissioned by the Liberal Democrats has revealed over three in four (77%) Brits who swim in lakes, rivers or the sea, have said sewage discharges have made them less likely to go swimming.

The poll found half of all UK adults go swimming in the country’s rivers, lakes or the sea. Shockingly, the majority of those adults are now less likely to go swimming in public areas as a result of water companies discharging sewage into waterways.

Swimmers over the age of 55 are far more likely to be put off by the sewage discharges – nearly 9 in 10 (87%) said the water firms’ actions had put them off swimming in lakes, rivers or coastlines.

Swimmers in the South East and West Midlands (83%) are also most likely to say sewage discharges have made them less likely to go swimming in lakes, rivers and coastlines.

Last year, raw sewage was pumped into rivers and seas for 1.75 million hours, an average 825 times per day, according to official Environment Agency data.

Key bathing water status locations, which attract swimmers from around the country, have been flooded with sewage. In the South West, Lyme Regis’ Church Cliff Beach bathing water suffered from 81 sewage discharges last year, lasting 1493 hours

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Mark Valladares

14 April 2023 – today’s press release

By Mark Valladares | Fri 14th April 2023 - 11:15 pm

Scrap Voter ID when Parliament returns on Monday

Commenting on today’s warning from the Local Government Association not to underestimate the difficulties Voter ID will cause for local authorities, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson Helen Morgan MP said:

Today’s warning on voter ID from the LGA shows the Conservative Government cannot bury their heads in the sand any longer. This is a national scandal that could end in a disaster for our democracy.

The Government must urgently back my Liberal Democrat Bill which would end these regulations swiftly in the three weeks left before polling day.

The moment Parliament returns on Monday,

…

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The Voice

Lib Dem attempt to kill off voter id regulations for May elections fails

By The Voice | Wed 14th December 2022 - 10:03 am

Lib Dem peers, ably led by Kath Pinnock, tried to get rid of the Government’s regulations for Voter ID last night. If Labour had voted with us, we might have had a chance of defeating the Government, but they abstained and the so-called fatal motion was defeated by 210 votes to 63.

While Kath Pinnock conceded that the principle of voter ID had been passed in the deeply flawed elections Bill, she found quite a few devils in the detail that could cause problems for voters. She told her fellow peers:

There are 240 pages of regulations in this statutory instrument. They must have plenty of time to be introduced and understood so that, when it comes to elections, they can be done fairly. This is not just about communications to electors. It is about the training of the staff: how do you determine whether the likeness of a photo is acceptable? Those are decisions that polling staff will have to make, and they need to be trained properly so that there is consistency across the country. There is a lot more to it than communications.

I remind the House that those who do the practical delivery of elections are very anxious and concerned, and some of them are opposed to the implementation of these regulations for the May elections. The Electoral Commission has grave concerns: it wants six months and will get under four. The Association of Electoral Administrators—the returning officers and elections officers—is very anxious that it will not have time to properly prepare for delivery in May. From local councils, as we have heard, the Conservative chair of the Local Government Association gave a very strongly worded statement, unusually so, expressing grave concerns about the delivery of this measure fairly and equitably across the piece.

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Mary Reid

Will the PM eat his ID card?

By Mary Reid | Wed 12th May 2021 - 2:19 pm

Embed from Getty Images

In today’s Guardian Marina Hyde has unearthed this quote from Boris Johnson in 2004:

If I am ever asked on the streets of London, or in any other venue, public or private, to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am, when I have done nothing wrong and am simply ambling along and breathing God’s fresh air like any other freeborn Englishman, then I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded I produce it.

I am reminded of Paddy Ashdown promising to eat his hat in 2015 when the polls were predicting large Lib Dem losses. And of Lib Dem Voice’s former editor, Stephen Tall, who pledged to run down Whitehall naked if we halved our number of MPs in the same election. Stephen, bless him, honoured his commitment, and did the run in full view of TV cameras on a cold Autumn day, although he was permitted a thong. Even Paddy submitted to good humoured humiliation when he ate a chocolate version of his hat on Question Time.

I somehow doubt that the Prime Minister will honour his pledge. But then the requirement for voters to present photo ID in order to be able to vote in a polling station, as announced in the Queen’s Speech yesterday, has already met with a great deal of public opposition, so its chances of reaching the statute books are, in my view, quite slim. However, we must not make any assumptions about how it will play out, and we must ensure that everything possible is done to prevent it becoming a reality.

The reasons for opposing voter ID have been covered extensively, but it is worth reminding people that it was blatantly used in some US states by Republicans to suppress Democratic votes.

Any extra complexity added to voting processes anywhere in the world potentially discourages some voters from exercising their democratic rights, and may even disenfranchise them.

In simple terms, voter impersonation (“personation” as it is correctly called) is a vanishingly small offence in the UK, as indeed it is in the US.  The Electoral Commission has published reports which show that 1 person was convicted of personation in 2017, none in 2018, 1 in 2019, and none in 2020 (although very few elections took place last year). This is not a problem seeking a solution.

On the other hand, it is a solution creating a problem.

In a research briefing from the House of Commons Library, we learn that the Electoral Commission had found that around 25% of voters do not have either a passport or driving licence – the most popular forms of photo ID used in this country. By extending that to include other forms of ID, such as bus passes, some 92.5% would be covered. But that still leaves 3.5 million voters without any permissible form of ID.

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Mark Valladares

11 August 2020 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Tue 11th August 2020 - 11:00 pm
  • Liberal Democrats call for independent equality assessment of Voter ID plan
  • Liberal Democrats: Government must halt use of facial recognition by police

Liberal Democrats call for independent equality assessment of Voter ID plan

The Liberal Democrats are calling for independent equality impact assessments into voter ID to protect “the legitimacy and integrity” of the UK electoral system as the Government looks to press ahead with voter ID legislation.

Citing evidence from around the world demonstrating that Voter ID makes it more difficult for people to vote, Liberal Democrat MPs are raising deep concerns that voter ID checks “will disproportionately impact ethnic minorities” at …

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Michael Taylor

Electoral fraud – the truth about personation

By Michael Taylor | Fri 18th October 2019 - 1:55 pm

I doubt that one in a hundred readers of LDV have ever heard of a tendered ballot paper, let alone seen one.

Electoral law makes provision at EVERY election for the issue of tendered ballot papers, sometimes known as pink ballot papers.

If you go down to the polling station to vote and the presiding officer says to you, “I’m sorry, but I can’t give you a ballot paper because you’ve already voted”, what do you do? The answer is that you can insist that you haven’t voted, and the presiding officer must then offer you a ‘tendered’ ballot paper. This is the same as the white ballot paper, but for two things.

  1. It is a different colour (usually pink)
  2. It is stored separately from the white ballot papers.

How is it counted? The answer is that it isn’t, unless the election is challenged in an electoral court. In that case, the original ballot paper is found and compared with the tendered ballot paper and the tendered paper is the one that is counted. Now of course you might quite correctly argue that this breaks the secrecy of the election, but it does give an element of protection against personation, that is the attempt to impersonate a voter and vote instead of him/her.

I have been involved in an election where tendered ballot papers were issued. This was in a big city in 2008, in a local election where the Lib Dem candidate lost by less than 120 votes. The election had many strange features, but it became clear that a party had engaged in personation by finding out who wasn’t going to vote and sending someone to vote for them. Following this narrow win, I asked the returning officer if there had been any tendered ballot papers issued and there had. He also told me it happened in many wards in the city.

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Caron Lindsay

The irony of the Tory Voter ID plans

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 16th October 2019 - 2:55 pm

Our democracy in this country is pretty much broken.

On one hand we have a government that constantly bangs on about the will of the people, whilst simultaneously doing its damnedest to undermining it.

The irony of that is not lost on me.

A Government that actually did care about the will of the people would make sure that the people got the parliament they asked for, for a start, by introducing a proportional system of voting. This is not boring constitutional stuff – we should be doing more to frame it as a fundamental issue of trust.

In recent years, the introduction of individual electoral registration has led to a severe democratic deficit. Just last month, Electoral Commission research showed that 17% of voters were not correctly registered.

That’s not far off one in five people, who are more likely to be young or from marginalised groups – and least likely to vote Conservative.

That is, surely, a much bigger problem than some confected spectre of “voter fraud” which is being used as a justification to bring in this measure.

The Electoral Reform Society has this to say on that subject:

Thankfully electoral fraud is very rare in the UK. Where voter fraud has occurred, it has been isolated and therefore is best tackled locally.

Out of 44.6 million votes cast in 2017, there was one conviction resulting from the 28 allegations of in-person voter fraud – that’s 0.000063%. Adding a major barrier to democratic engagement off the back of this would be a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

And our Tom Brake said that this measure was a blatant attempt at voter suppression and rig future elections:

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Janet Grauberg

Compulsory Voter ID – sensible security measure or deliberate disenfranchisement?

By Janet Grauberg | Sun 21st October 2018 - 8:55 am

Did you know that the Government has a manifesto commitment to bring in compulsory ID for Parliamentary elections?  They plan to require us to show some sort of ID before we are issued with our ballot paper in a polling station. 

The idea was piloted in five Boroughs in the recent council elections, and the Government is now looking for pilot sites for next May’s elections. The Cabinet Office and the Electoral Commission have both published evaluations of the pilots. There is also an excellent report from the Electoral Reform Society setting the issue of voter ID in the context of other priorities for electoral reform.

I took part in a project, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd, to find out how voters experienced these pilots.  We contacted Lib Dem and Labour campaigners in the five Boroughs and asked them to survey their residents and to give us their own views. We received responses from 21 campaigners and 329 residents from four of the five Boroughs (Woking, Bromley, Watford & Swindon). We also held a fringe meeting at Federal Conference, where Peter Taylor, the Liberal Democrat Mayor of Watford, spoke about the Watford experience.  

The Five Pilots

The five Boroughs piloted different approaches: Woking, Bromley and Gosport tested various forms of photo ID requirement, although in Bromley and Gosport two forms of non-photo ID were also allowed; Swindon and Watford piloted a requirement to bring a poll card which was electronically scanned, with Watford also allowing other ID in the absence of a polling card.

Voters Turned Away

The Electoral Commission evaluation states that, according to the Returning Officers, 1,036 people attempted to vote without the correct ID, and that between 326 and 350 did not return later in the day, an average of 0.23% of all polling station voters.  The “did not return” rate varied between councils, with 57% of those initially turned away not returning in Woking (where the ID requirements were strictest) and about 27% not returning in Bromley and Watford. 

Campaigners in our survey gave some examples: 

“A gentleman  with a Surrey Senior Bus Pass was refused a vote because his Bus Pass had two names and apparently his name on the Electoral Register contained an additional name”. (Campaigner from Woking)

“I heard of …one person turned away despite having a digital copy of a bank statement, he was told to go home and print the statement out.” (Campaigner from Bromley) 

Voters put off due to the need for ID

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Rich Wilsher

Local Liberal Democrats join leading charities to condemn Bromley voter ID pilot

By Rich Wilsher | Mon 12th March 2018 - 12:32 pm

In the upcoming local elections, for the first time ever, Bromley residents will have to produce verifiable ID at polling stations to cast their vote.

The Borough has volunteered to take part in a pilot scheme which, if successful, could see this scheme rolled out across mainland UK. The move follows a Conservative government report which claims such moves are necessary to prevent voter ID fraud.

On the face of it, this doesn’t seem unreasonable. Many other countries insist upon ID before you can vote. Surely people can do the same when voting here?

But here’s the thing – millions of people in …

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