Photo ID to vote is a flagrant cladding attack

[Pireck]

You will need photo ID to vote in the general election this year. This won't be a problem for me personally as I have it, but many of the people where I grew up are too poor to drive or travel abroad. Many people in this country don't have valid photo ID, and they shouldn't have to to shell out a significant amount of money they likely don't have in order to cast their vote. An absolutely flagrant attack on the poor and otherwise deprived.

The title is supposed to read classist, not cladding.

It doesn't though, for many elderly/infirm people.

Elderly /infirm people may not have photo Id but offering photo id will not help the likes of people who cannot venture out of their homes to post a vote.

Many elderly people won't have a valid passport or even a driving licence.

So many people just can't vote.

If you are an expat, you used to be able to vote in UK elections for up to 15 years after you left.

Not anymore. You can now vote for life. And they don't seem too fussy about where you can vote.

However, turns out that expat voters might be more likely to not vote Conservative.

Brits living abroad for more than 15 years get general election vote - BBC News

It's been on social media for years adverts to get ID which is free, plenty of people have ID already, and postal voting is available.

If you haven't availed yourself of the options thats really on you and yes you are feckless and lazy.

All of these people who are saying that if people want to vote badly enough, they will jump through this extra hoop...surely we should be making it easier for people to vote not harder.

And the stressed parents and those holding down two jobs and the neurodiverse who struggle with admin and the illiterate (there's a reason we mark with a X) and the disabled and people only just managing to hold their shit together and don't need another fucking useless task in their lives. They'll just not bother. But yes, useless and feckless if you prefer...

And BTW, useless and feckless people have a right to vote too, some of the most useless and feckless even get voted in to run the country and they can't even submit their expenses properly so don't you dare disenfranchise them.

Exactly!
That was my point entirely earlier, it just seems like one extra unnecessary hurdle for some.

Give it a rest ffs. Just because people work hard doesn't render them incapable of carrying out any other tasks.
And postal vote fraud is a big problem. There was a big hoohaa a few years ago in my town, and it was Labour
How do you think Geoege Galloway got in at Rochdale?

How do people get jobs without photo id? Everyone I've known had to produce passport to show right to work in UK.

People who work hard aren't unable to do these things necessarily. But they are less likely to, it is another action to complete and therefore fewer.people will complete it, especially if they have particularly demanding.and/or draining lives.

You don't need a passport to prove your right to work in the UK.

A birth certificate will do

Prove your right to work to an employer: Overview - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Do you have stats on this?

Which is funny considering being born in UK doesn't automatically make you a citizen.

This. People who care will bother. I have worked long hours for low pay (care, farm, supermarket, factory work) and experienced other adversities. If something is important you get it sorted.

We've needed photographic ID to vote in Northern Ireland since 2002, honestly I'm not seeing the problem

It’s hard to think long term when the short term is so fucking hard
Not sure why so many find that so hard to understand

@Gorgonemilezola here you go

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10582591/

Link doesn't work for me?

Exactly this - when you have so much to contend with, this just gets pushed to the bottom of the priority list and eventually forgotten.

I read the guardian link

as I have said before this discussion pops up on political podcasts

the election could be as far away as January 2025 if the Tories want to hold out for the economy to improve or they can risk people suffering from political apathy from the onslaught of reporting we shall have form the US election with an October election

So then - when the link was about voter registration issues for councils when it came to new students, did you decide to talk about voter ID for students?

It's irrelevant about the impact of students and podcasts.

It's interesting to see someone not understand that they reacted incorrectly.

But it's a sidetrack.

I worked as a polling clerk in last year's local elections, the first where voter ID was required.
Our station was one of the busier ones. We had TWO people unable to produce valid ID; one went home to get some, the other decided not to.
Not sure what exactly you're trying to rustle up here OP, but actual evidence begs to differ.
Other countries manage to work with ID and guess what? So can we.

I worked as a polling clerk in last year's local elections, the first where voter ID was required.
Our station was one of the busier ones. We had TWO people unable to produce valid ID; one went home to get some, the other decided not to.
Not sure what exactly you're trying to rustle up here OP, but actual evidence begs to differ.
Other countries manage to work with ID and guess what? So can we.

this is NOT ACTUAL EVIDENCE this is an anonymous person posting under the moniker of pollingclerk declaring something which could be anecdotal at best, bollocks at worst. But even if true it doesn’t stop the fact that people might not GOING because they don’t have ID/ haven’t sorted it in time. I’m not sure how anyone queues past all the signs to only realise at the bloody desk.

You don’t need to show ID to stand as a candidate in any election, yet candidates are twice as likely to commit electoral fraud.

How many people turned up, but then turned themselves away before they got to the desk?

The Electoral Commission recognises that there is a problem with data collection and the understanding of the impact

The data is here:

Report on the May 2023 local elections in England | Electoral Commission

Our interim analysis highlighted key findings about the impact of the new voter ID requirement at the May 2023 elections. Our research found that:

• around 4% of all people who said they did not vote at the elections on 4 May listed the ID requirement as the reason – 3% said they did not have the necessary ID, and 1% said they disagreed with the new requirement
• at least 0.25% of people who tried to vote at a polling station in May 2023 were not able to because of the voter ID requirement – this was equivalent to approximately 14,000 people who were not issued with a ballot paper
• awareness of the need to bring ID to vote at a polling station was high – 92% of people were aware of the need to bring ID to vote at a polling station, although awareness was significantly lower among people who said they did not have an accepted form of ID (74%)
• awareness and take-up of the Voter Authority Certificate was low – awareness of the availability of the free Voter Authority Certificate stood at 57% in May 2023, and only 25,000 certificates were actually used as a form of ID on polling day

We also said that further work was needed to improve the collection of data on the impact of voter ID at future elections. We recommended that the UK Government should ensure Returning Officers are able to collect and report monitoring data on the impact of voter ID at future elections, and that work is also needed to improve the quality and reliability of data collected at polling stations in future

I worked polling station last year and we didn’t get anyone with the council issued ID. Out of 15 hours there I think we had 2 with no valid ID (one had nhs and one a council issued taxi ID) and they both popped back. It was being monitored. I suppose though the no ID might not have come rather than be turned away.