It seems the biggest success of the local elections in England this year is the new “voter ID” legislation that appears to have deprived huge numbers of people of the ability to vote.

Disability Rights UK claimed in advance of the election that

a large portion of the two million people identified as not having access to photo ID will be disabled individuals, many of whom will already be excluded from engaging in elections due to inaccessible practice.

There will also be many disabled voters with an intersectional experience e.g. disabled trans people, or disabled people experiencing domestic abuse, who already face additional barriers to accessing valid identification.

This Site has already reported that disabled people were set to be turned away from voting stations because of the requirement for them to remove their masks in order to be identified. This prediction seems to have come true.

Transgender people were likely to be turned away because their identity documents did not match their new name as recorded on the electoral roll, The Guardian reported.

The forms of identification that were accepted were limited – to a bizarre degree. Here’s Labour member of Parliament Peter Dowd, who was not allowed to use his Parliamentary photographic pass to identify himself:

And the above only mentions people who were turned away. It seems the legislation was highly successful at dissuading people from even bothering to apply for appropriate identification:

It’s been reported that only 85,000 people have applied for a free voter ID certificate in time for the May Local Elections, despite the Electoral Commission’s estimate that over 2 million voters in the UK don’t have access to photo ID.

The Guardian reports that the numbers applying from older and younger demographics are also especially low. Just 2,025 people aged 75-plus applied, and 3,334 aged under 25.

So almost two million people couldn’t be bothered to collect appropriate identification to vote in the elections.

We must remember that turnout in local elections is, historically, low – but it’s possible (at the time of writing I haven’t seen the figures) that because of the “voter ID” requirement, turnout in this particular election was historically low. I hope you appreciate the distinction.

And remember: last year

there was not a single proven case of in-person voter impersonation.

Worse than all of this, though, is evidence that staff at polling stations were instructed to turn away people without appropriate voter ID before they actually entered the buildings, so they would not have to obey part of the law demanding that any rejections must be recorded.

ITV News reported that tellers had told them between 10-25% of voters in Oxfordshire were unable to cast their ballots due to the new measures.

But East Anglia Bylines

discovered three polling stations in East Suffolk on Thursday where staff confirmed they had been briefed that, if possible, voters without voter ID were to be headed off before they entered the polling station proper, so they would not have to be recorded. The reason given by one polling clerk was that “it will save on the paperwork”.

If this were true, it was clearly in contravention of the Electoral Commission’s stipulations. The Commission has specified that those voters turned away because they don’t have the correct form of identification have to be registered, in order to draw up accurate data on the effects of the new legislation.

The claim, it seems, is that election officers at East Suffolk Council carried out the briefings. The council has denied this, but has apparently not been prepared to discuss the matter.

Meanwhile,

the three polling station staff were independently interviewed and were from different areas. A fourth later also volunteered the same information via social media

So we need to know whether polling station staff were briefed to act in this way; if so, how many polling stations were affected – and who gave the order for this to happen?

Accurate recording of the number of people whose attempts to vote were rejected is a requirement of the “voter ID” legislation, as described by the Electoral Commission:

By law, polling station staff must record data when a ballot paper can’t be issued because a voter didn’t have accepted form of ID. This includes data on people who are turned away and later return with accepted ID.

Were Tories behind this alleged breach of the law, falsely trying to make it seem that their “voter suppression” law had little effect on turnout?

If not them, then who?

Who else had an interest in faking the statistics?

Source: Thousands of Disabled people disenfranchised by the introduction of voter ID | Disability Rights UK

---

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here: