Voter ID to be spread to postal votes. Do the Tories have a death wish?
The Tories introduced voter ID at polling stations and the electorate in the local elections turned away from them en masse; they lost 1,063 seats in the greatest local election defeat any UK political party has suffered.
What conclusion did they draw from this? Well…
ID checks to be introduced on Postal votes without Parliamentary scrutiny, as the Tory Government use a rarely-used statutory instrument to change the rules, & sneak the announcement out in a written statement…
https://t.co/7BxDekL7IU— Bryan Smith #RejoinEU (@BpsmithUk) May 24, 2023
It’s possible that the Tories tried to gerrymander postal votes at May’s election, by persuading voters to send their ballot papers to their local Conservative association instead of their local council.
Bringing postal and proxy votes in line with “in person” votes makes sense if such an attempt at gerrymandering failed.
I make this point because in other ways it makes no sense for the Tories to do this at all. For instance:
Newly announced government rules to require identity checks for postal and proxy voting in UK parliamentary elections are likely to make it harder for older people to take part in elections, a leading charity has warned.
Age UK said… [it would] “erect additional barriers to older people exercising their democratic right to vote.
“Rather than strengthening our democracy our worry is that it will weaken it, if some older people with postal votes find it too hard to submit their ID, or to re-register every three years, and simply give up.”
It strikes This Writer as a strange way to treat a segment of the population that has previously been – mostly – supportive of the Conservative Party at recent elections.
Making it harder for pensioners to vote means another group will find it harder to vote Conservative.
One fails to see the logic in it. Considering the need for voter ID was fabricated (there aren’t enough fraudulent attempts to vote to justify it), the logical choice would have been to roll back voter ID altogether.
But then, maybe these Tories have a political death wish.
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Dear Mike Sivier,
The oldest ladies don’t have a National Insurance number of their own, as you were sacked as soon as you got married, or ladies went straight from parental home to being a housewife, so never worked.
This means the oldest ladies have their husband’s National Insurance number, even if he is dead.
There is a potential new party that would take the vital Grey Vote, especially the majority who are women, from Tory, Labour and Lib Dems alike. Help that project keep going please, with your £2 donation to crwodfunder:
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/crowdfund-unlimited-page-website—full-manifesto
And just how is this moronic idea going to work ?
It is not a death wish for they are already dead, it is a burial wish or should be a cremation for then they would not arise again.
Fascist tories never were ‘the sharpest cards in box’ and this latest corrupt decision proves it! How to ensure tory supporters are denied their vote – demand they produce ID!
The other reason is fascist tories believe everyone is as rotten and corrupt as themselves! Everyone is attempting to vote twice!
OK. I’m a retired senior citizen with NO photo identification. All I’ve got to use for ID are a paper driving license, birth certificate and utility bills etc., which were good enough as per ID when applying for jobs age at the interview stage when I was of working. I’ve got a car so haven’t got a bus pass nor applied to my local authority for some sort of ID to use when voting. I do have a postal vote currently and am wondering how hard it’s going to be to hang on to it without much ID to offer to prove who I am.
Surely BEFORE demanding every voter to stump up photo ID etc., any responsible government would ensure that EVERY voter has such ID in their possession to ensure that all voters could take part in a ballot if they chose to? It’s almost as if the government are trying to prevent certain kinds of individuals from voting, which, according to the utterly repulsive Jacob Rees-Mogg they are. Since I am receiving the State Pension why should I have to prove who I am when I vote when the state is already paying a pension into my bank account? If the state is satisfied I am entitled to a pension why would I have to prove who I am again to participate in a democratic election?
Since there seems to not be enough voter fraud in the UK to affect the result of an election, only a very small amount seemingly actually going on, why make photo ID essential to vote in an election? In my age group there are a huge number of people without passports or photo card driving licences etc., who may be stopped or deterred from voting because of these stupid measures.