Nearly 10,000 people were prevented from voting in the local government elections earlier this month – not because they were trying to commit fraud but simply because they did not have the right kind of identification documents.

It was a consequence of the Tory government’s attempt to gerrymander democracy (according to former Tory minister Jacob Rees-Mogg) by ensuring that only certain forms of ID would be allowed at polling stations.

The claim was that the measure was introduced to prevent voter fraud – which has always been practically non-existent in in-person voting in the UK. Postal votes are much more vulnerable to manipulation – as we discovered when the Tories tried to get people to send postal voting forms to their own constituency associations.

Hilariously, the plan backfired because the Conservatives lost more than 1,000 council seats; the voters turned their back on the party in a huge rejection of the government and its local lackeys.

Here‘s the BBC’s story:

Information from 160 of 230 councils where polls were held this year shows 26,165 voters were initially denied ballot papers at polling stations.

Of these, 16,588 people came back with valid ID, whilst 9,577 did not return… Campaigners warn this would not capture all those affected.

Amazingly, the Tory lickspittles at the BBC had to include a line that the number of people who didn’t get to vote was “a relatively small number of voters”.

Not only does this fail to take into account votes lost from no fewer than 70 other councils, but there were reports of people being turned away before they were able to get inside polling stations, meaning their inability to vote did not, legally, have to be recorded.

So… what happens now?

Logically, the government should review the effect of its own legislation on its ability to win elections, and this should persuade it to alter or even repeal the “voter ID” law.

But the UK does not have a logical government.

The intention was to deny democracy to a large volume of the electorate, and in that sense it has succeeded.

I think the Tories will allow this insult to democracy to continue out of spite. They’ll probably say it needs to “bed in”.

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