Heterozygous twin embryos sometimes have one absorb the other so a person with two codes is born. I was immensely proud of myself when I figured out the answer to a House medical mystery before he did, regarding such a case.
I'm curious what impact on turnout would be expected those who think a "vast" amount of voting would be "suppressed" by demanding any of 12 different forms of ID, some of which are free at the point of access.
My guess is this would affect turnout by 0.0%
No issues if it’s a phone bill or whatever. It’s the photo bit which is problematic.
And without the photo bit it's completely pointless.
The thing that annoys me is that I would support it were it attached to a proper valid Id card - it's the lack of thinking that is the real problem here.
And I was anti-ID cards for decades until I saw them in action throughout Europe. 1 example in-person Bank Fraud is virtually impossible in Austria / Bulgaria, it's a daily occurrence here.
We don't need id cards just have straightforward voter id with fingerprint id at all the polling stations.
Fck me, that escalated quickly! Why not retinal scanning just to be on the safe side, maybe even a DNA check?
Surely Rectal scanning - I know it wouldn't solve anything but it would ensure only the most diligent would vote.
The Edwina amendment as it will come to be known. Might encourage multiple attempts to vote in some cases..
I'm curious what impact on turnout would be expected those who think a "vast" amount of voting would be "suppressed" by demanding any of 12 different forms of ID, some of which are free at the point of access.
My guess is this would affect turnout by 0.0%
No issues if it’s a phone bill or whatever. It’s the photo bit which is problematic.
And without the photo bit it's completely pointless.
The thing that annoys me is that I would support it were it attached to a proper valid Id card - it's the lack of thinking that is the real problem here.
And I was anti-ID cards for decades until I saw them in action throughout Europe. 1 example in-person Bank Fraud is virtually impossible in Austria / Bulgaria, it's a daily occurrence here.
We don't need id cards just have straightforward voter id with fingerprint id at all the polling stations.
Amazing the mental grip American politics has on our consciousness here, isn't it. This voter ID argument is classic: both sides - and this seems to split almost entirely on partisan Tory / non-Tory lines - importing the beliefs and arguments of their US counterparts in the republicans and democrats wholesale.
This is one of the troubles with sharing a language. We get their journalism and social media content and assume America is the world.
It's like a form of cosplay. Cowboys and Indians for our times. I don't actually think the conservatives are making a concerted effort at voter suppression, unlike their republican US counterparts. The UK is a very different country. But they are donning the fancy dress and playing the part because it feels like the right thing for their tribe to do, and their left wing opponents are channelling the outrage to levels worthy of the RSC, because that's what the Dems do.
On Scotland, Cameron's old tutor at Oxford Vernon Bogdanor suggests partitioning Scotland if it ever voted for independence and enabling some Unionist areas to stay in the UK
Why? If you believe in self determination - as Scot Nats must - why do they have an arbitrary historical line as the boundary. If a clear majority of the Borders want to stay in the UK why should they be ripped out against their will?
If a clear majority of Scots want to stay in the EU why should they be ripped out against their will? Etc
Apparently as the Borders are strongly Union they should be partitioned off from Scotland. Great! Logically then London should be partitioned off from GB and enter an EEA trade zone like NI because they supported Remain.
I'm curious what impact on turnout would be expected those who think a "vast" amount of voting would be "suppressed" by demanding any of 12 different forms of ID, some of which are free at the point of access.
My guess is this would affect turnout by 0.0%
No issues if it’s a phone bill or whatever. It’s the photo bit which is problematic.
And without the photo bit it's completely pointless.
The thing that annoys me is that I would support it were it attached to a proper valid Id card - it's the lack of thinking that is the real problem here.
And I was anti-ID cards for decades until I saw them in action throughout Europe. 1 example in-person Bank Fraud is virtually impossible in Austria / Bulgaria, it's a daily occurrence here.
We don't need id cards just have straightforward voter id with fingerprint id at all the polling stations.
Fingerprint id - how does that work?
It works by confirming your fingerprint against a database. Much quicker at the polling stations whilst collation takes quite some effort.
What do you do for a living - as believe me that really wouldn't be quicker..
Hint I do ID confirmation systems as part of my job - 2 of my last 5 jobs were front end systems for bank tellers at European banks - complex ID verification was part of the job.
Remember I have zero problem with a proper ID card - my problem is with this half baked madness.
How long does it take the old bill to check an id using a fingerprint scanner..30 secs max....
Thanks for confirming you have a criminal record...
But equally databases are fast when you are running a few queries at a time (they need to be). When you are running thousands at the same time (as would be needed in your case) that is a very different issue and not one that is easily scalable....
So you have 2 problems -
1) most people don't have their fingerprints in a police database 2) the database design will need to be very different and built in a very unique way to cope with a capacity need of zero / 55 million requests / zero.
You have obviously never watched Traffic Cops or Police Interceptors. Database will take time but once there...sorted. Just the young to add on and the deceased to remove.. qed.
There are several legal hurdles to a second referendum under the Scotland Act 1998. The first is that the Scottish Government would need to attest to the legality of such a bill in a statement to the Scottish Parliament – a statement that would require to be underpinned by legal advice from the Lord Advocate; secondly, the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament would also have to confirm his or her view of its legality. Ken Macintosh, who has stepped down from this role showed himself to be robustly independent in the last Parliament. We await election of a new person to this role. Thirdly, even if admitted to the Parliament, the Bill could be challenged both during and after its passage, either by UK law officers – most obviously the Advocate General – or by a private citizen, if the UK Government decides not to get involved.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
On Scotland, Cameron's old tutor at Oxford Vernon Bogdanor suggests partitioning Scotland if it ever voted for independence and enabling some Unionist areas to stay in the UK
Why? If you believe in self determination - as Scot Nats must - why do they have an arbitrary historical line as the boundary. If a clear majority of the Borders want to stay in the UK why should they be ripped out against their will?
If a clear majority of Scots want to stay in the EU why should they be ripped out against their will? Etc
Apparently as the Borders are strongly Union they should be partitioned off from Scotland. Great! Logically then London should be partitioned off from GB and enter an EEA trade zone like NI because they supported Remain.
That London Super League is going to be a bit shit when you have to rope in Leyton Orient amongst the "Super".....
With so much fraud about we should abolish so-called democracy and appoint Count Binface as dictator. Not only would be easier, but would bring in more sensible policies.
I'm curious what impact on turnout would be expected those who think a "vast" amount of voting would be "suppressed" by demanding any of 12 different forms of ID, some of which are free at the point of access.
My guess is this would affect turnout by 0.0%
No issues if it’s a phone bill or whatever. It’s the photo bit which is problematic.
And without the photo bit it's completely pointless.
The thing that annoys me is that I would support it were it attached to a proper valid Id card - it's the lack of thinking that is the real problem here.
And I was anti-ID cards for decades until I saw them in action throughout Europe. 1 example in-person Bank Fraud is virtually impossible in Austria / Bulgaria, it's a daily occurrence here.
We don't need id cards just have straightforward voter id with fingerprint id at all the polling stations.
Fingerprint id - how does that work?
It works by confirming your fingerprint against a database. Much quicker at the polling stations whilst collation takes quite some effort.
What do you do for a living - as believe me that really wouldn't be quicker..
Hint I do ID confirmation systems as part of my job - 2 of my last 5 jobs were front end systems for bank tellers at European banks - complex ID verification was part of the job.
Remember I have zero problem with a proper ID card - my problem is with this half baked madness.
How long does it take the old bill to check an id using a fingerprint scanner..30 secs max....
Thanks for confirming you have a criminal record...
But equally databases are fast when you are running a few queries at a time (they need to be). When you are running thousands at the same time (as would be needed in your case) that is a very different issue and not one that is easily scalable....
So you have 2 problems -
1) most people don't have their fingerprints in a police database 2) the database design will need to be very different and built in a very unique way to cope with a capacity need of zero / 55 million requests / zero.
You have obviously never watched Traffic Cops or Police Interceptors. Database will take time but once there...sorted. Just the young to add on and the deceased to remove.. qed.
I would watch those programs a bit more carefully and say think why those tests only appear infrequently..
I'm curious what impact on turnout would be expected those who think a "vast" amount of voting would be "suppressed" by demanding any of 12 different forms of ID, some of which are free at the point of access.
My guess is this would affect turnout by 0.0%
No issues if it’s a phone bill or whatever. It’s the photo bit which is problematic.
And without the photo bit it's completely pointless.
The thing that annoys me is that I would support it were it attached to a proper valid Id card - it's the lack of thinking that is the real problem here.
And I was anti-ID cards for decades until I saw them in action throughout Europe. 1 example in-person Bank Fraud is virtually impossible in Austria / Bulgaria, it's a daily occurrence here.
We don't need id cards just have straightforward voter id with fingerprint id at all the polling stations.
Fck me, that escalated quickly! Why not retinal scanning just to be on the safe side, maybe even a DNA check?
No - we all need a microchip implanted (like my dog) and that is scanned when you vote. No need for ID cards.. Roll out the chips. No chip means - no benefits, no healthcare, nothing...
Amazing the mental grip American politics has on our consciousness here, isn't it. This voter ID argument is classic: both sides - and this seems to split almost entirely on partisan Tory / non-Tory lines - importing the beliefs and arguments of their US counterparts in the republicans and democrats wholesale.
This is one of the troubles with sharing a language. We get their journalism and social media content and assume America is the world.
It's like a form of cosplay. Cowboys and Indians for our times. I don't actually think the conservatives are making a concerted effort at voter suppression, unlike their republican US counterparts. The UK is a very different country. But they are donning the fancy dress and playing the part because it feels like the right thing for their tribe to do, and their left wing opponents are channelling the outrage to levels worthy of the RSC, because that's what the Dems do.
Part of the clear issue, I would say, is that the policy itself was first loudly promoted during the Dominic Cummings era, at a time when a whole range of other clearly Trumpian postures and themes were being imported too, such as the "surrender bill". It's natural therefore that the left should import similar opposition. More outspoken aspects of current American progressive politics that have been imported can sometimes begin the mimesis from the left, but here it's clearly begun from the right.
Amazing the mental grip American politics has on our consciousness here, isn't it. This voter ID argument is classic: both sides - and this seems to split almost entirely on partisan Tory / non-Tory lines - importing the beliefs and arguments of their US counterparts in the republicans and democrats wholesale.
This is one of the troubles with sharing a language. We get their journalism and social media content and assume America is the world.
It's like a form of cosplay. Cowboys and Indians for our times. I don't actually think the conservatives are making a concerted effort at voter suppression, unlike their republican US counterparts. The UK is a very different country. But they are donning the fancy dress and playing the part because it feels like the right thing for their tribe to do, and their left wing opponents are channelling the outrage to levels worthy of the RSC, because that's what the Dems do.
Agreed, we should always be careful importing America's neuroses to British politics. I note the arguments here that imposing voter ID might be more likely to disenfranchise key aspects of the Conservative coalition than the Labour one, but we're all playing our Partisan roles. That said, I do feel like it's likely to impact on who Labour Activists think their core is (the very urban poor, the homeless and immigrants without a good grasp of English, though these groups are not likely to be voters anyway). Not to say I'm in favour of voter ID, because elections and their franchise should be as open as possible and there should be as few barriers as possible to voting.
Grimesy (‘one of the smartest voices of the new right’), reeling from not getting a sinecure with GB News, seeks attention in ever more desperate ways. He’ll be taking selfies while pissing on Karl Marx’s grave afore ye know it.
I'm curious what impact on turnout would be expected those who think a "vast" amount of voting would be "suppressed" by demanding any of 12 different forms of ID, some of which are free at the point of access.
My guess is this would affect turnout by 0.0%
No issues if it’s a phone bill or whatever. It’s the photo bit which is problematic.
And without the photo bit it's completely pointless.
The thing that annoys me is that I would support it were it attached to a proper valid Id card - it's the lack of thinking that is the real problem here.
And I was anti-ID cards for decades until I saw them in action throughout Europe. 1 example in-person Bank Fraud is virtually impossible in Austria / Bulgaria, it's a daily occurrence here.
We don't need id cards just have straightforward voter id with fingerprint id at all the polling stations.
Fck me, that escalated quickly! Why not retinal scanning just to be on the safe side, maybe even a DNA check?
No - we all need a microchip implanted (like my dog) and that is scanned when you vote. No need for ID cards.. Roll out the chips. No chip means - no benefits, no healthcare, nothing...
A bit of a problem if you are going to A&E because your right arm has been chopped off.
you best hope someone remembers to bring it with you.
I'm curious what impact on turnout would be expected those who think a "vast" amount of voting would be "suppressed" by demanding any of 12 different forms of ID, some of which are free at the point of access.
My guess is this would affect turnout by 0.0%
No issues if it’s a phone bill or whatever. It’s the photo bit which is problematic.
And without the photo bit it's completely pointless.
The thing that annoys me is that I would support it were it attached to a proper valid Id card - it's the lack of thinking that is the real problem here.
And I was anti-ID cards for decades until I saw them in action throughout Europe. 1 example in-person Bank Fraud is virtually impossible in Austria / Bulgaria, it's a daily occurrence here.
We don't need id cards just have straightforward voter id with fingerprint id at all the polling stations.
Fingerprint id - how does that work?
It works by confirming your fingerprint against a database. Much quicker at the polling stations whilst collation takes quite some effort.
What do you do for a living - as believe me that really wouldn't be quicker..
Hint I do ID confirmation systems as part of my job - 2 of my last 5 jobs were front end systems for bank tellers at European banks - complex ID verification was part of the job.
Remember I have zero problem with a proper ID card - my problem is with this half baked madness.
How long does it take the old bill to check an id using a fingerprint scanner..30 secs max....
Thanks for confirming you have a criminal record...
But equally databases are fast when you are running a few queries at a time (they need to be). When you are running thousands at the same time (as would be needed in your case) that is a very different issue and not one that is easily scalable....
So you have 2 problems -
1) most people don't have their fingerprints in a police database 2) the database design will need to be very different and built in a very unique way to cope with a capacity need of zero / 55 million requests / zero.
You have obviously never watched Traffic Cops or Police Interceptors. Database will take time but once there...sorted. Just the young to add on and the deceased to remove.. qed.
I would watch those programs a bit more carefully and say think why those tests only appear infrequently..
Most likely is that the cops know the majority of the villains and secondly there are only a few scanners out there at the moment. It doesnt help that the police destroyed half its fingerprint database...
The thing that amuses me is that people seem to be under a misapprehension that voter ID is about suppression, or is Johnson's idea, or is Cummings idea.
The fact is that this is the Electoral Commission's idea and the Electoral Commission have been in favour of this since 2014. In that time there's been three Prime Ministers, three General Elections - and years of trials and development. Trials of voter ID occurred two years ago, organised by the Electoral Commission which had been working on this for five years by that point, while Johnson was a backbencher.
Its sad for me that Voter ID may be needed. I also have ethical qualms on the government having our ID element. But its not about suppression that's just American nonsense, just like suggesting that our Police are like America's is nonsense.
Whilst I'm no fan of the erosion of civil liberties, showing a photo ID in order to vote is an excellent proposal for protecting democracy. It will be popular with mainstream voters.
Complaining about this is woke.
No it isn’t. It’s fundamentally unBritish. Like vaccine passports.
And I suspect is being introduced for the same reason - to bring in ID cards by stealth.
Which is (a) a sign of cowardly this government is that it doesn’t have the fortitude to admit it and (b) will mean that all the safeguards we would need against our very corrupt and ineffectual civil service misusing them will not be put in place.
ID cards seems to be beloved of the civil service as it seems like who ever gets into power eventually decides, in modern times, that theyd like to give it a go. So the purported reasons change, and the motivation of the politicians change, but the government machine is determined to have it.
Despite jokes I dont generally buy the Yes Minister view of the civil service with it's own agendas too much, but on this issue it seems like it just seeks a way to persuade whoever is in power.
Sadly, in recent years, it has become more obvious that Yes, Minister was seen as a documentary training course by those currently running the Civil Service.
I think that's because Sir Humphrey was sinister but also a cool, impressive man. Notably while Hacker got round him in occasion for good reasons, some of the most notable examples were where Humphrey was actually in the right (eg when Hacker undercut a chemical plant project because of political pressure, when he blackmailed Humphrey into lying about him misleading the House).
More people need to model themselves after Bernard, like me.
On Scotland, Cameron's old tutor at Oxford Vernon Bogdanor suggests partitioning Scotland if it ever voted for independence and enabling some Unionist areas to stay in the UK
Why? If you believe in self determination - as Scot Nats must - why do they have an arbitrary historical line as the boundary. If a clear majority of the Borders want to stay in the UK why should they be ripped out against their will?
If a clear majority of Scots want to stay in the EU why should they be ripped out against their will? Etc
Well quite. I don't think that purported option was thought through.
Whilst I'm no fan of the erosion of civil liberties, showing a photo ID in order to vote is an excellent proposal for protecting democracy. It will be popular with mainstream voters.
Complaining about this is woke.
Disagreeing with me is woke. Infact its insomnia.
That’s put this conversation to sleep.
It is however striking when people are accused of being woke how offended they are about being accused of same.
It’s striking that the right has redefined woke as a blanket epithet for anyone who disagrees with them for any reason.
There are signs of it turning into the new "political correctness gone mad", just as political correctness went from something fairly academically specific at the turn of the '90s to a catch-all.
Large majorities dislike political correctness - on both sides of the pond. It's best defined as pointless and irrelevant pedantry to avoid any possibility of giving offence, which actually just insults people's intelligence and sometimes causes greater offence. You know, things like Happy Winterval (rather than Merry Christmas) or Baa Baa Black Sheep being a bit "problematic". Strawperson would be another example.
We're talking between 65-80% here, and sometimes upwards of 80%:
"A recent YouGov poll found that 67 per cent felt that “Too many people are easily offended these days over the language that others use” came closer to their view than “People need to be more careful about the language they use to avoid offending people with different backgrounds”."
----
The irony here is I agree with the first statement, but for me the people who seem most easily offended are the anti woke, complaining every day about some woke lunatic on twitter who no-one would listen and I would never even hear of without the oxygen they are provided by the culture war.
Apart from the fact that when the two extremes want to be elected, then only one side is going to curtail my freedom of speech.
I think woke is becoming the right's gaslighting. No one quite knows what it means but it is used to signal disapproval of someone else's view of something or another.
My view of woke is that it is the transfer of capitalism and individuality into identity and politics.
So the fact there are over 100+ genders means that you can look through the list of these and identify your brand. We seem the same with sexual preference where the LGBT I grew up with and can understand is now replaced with an alphabet of options.
We also see the same with race. I listened to an interesting programme yesterday on radio 4 about those who are black but have a mixed heritage called passing. I thought it was interesting and helped me but the thing I found difficult was that for those people who feel they can't talk about these issues now it was a negative, but also those who talk and use the wrong language are also described in a negative fashion. I prefer to see the world where people try to be generous and kind but might make mistakes.
The recent discussion around Prince Harry and Archie and his skin colour could be viewed from more than one angle. I know if I spoke to a friend and relative about the skin colour of their child it would not be in a derogatory way, just to make sure that they were starting to consider the issues around identity that it would bring up for the child.
Amazing the mental grip American politics has on our consciousness here, isn't it. This voter ID argument is classic: both sides - and this seems to split almost entirely on partisan Tory / non-Tory lines - importing the beliefs and arguments of their US counterparts in the republicans and democrats wholesale.
This is one of the troubles with sharing a language. We get their journalism and social media content and assume America is the world.
It's like a form of cosplay. Cowboys and Indians for our times. I don't actually think the conservatives are making a concerted effort at voter suppression, unlike their republican US counterparts. The UK is a very different country. But they are donning the fancy dress and playing the part because it feels like the right thing for their tribe to do, and their left wing opponents are channelling the outrage to levels worthy of the RSC, because that's what the Dems do.
Agreed, we should always be careful importing America's neuroses to British politics. I note the arguments here that imposing voter ID might be more likely to disenfranchise key aspects of the Conservative coalition than the Labour one, but we're all playing our Partisan roles. That said, I do feel like it's likely to impact on who Labour Activists think their core is (the very urban poor, the homeless and immigrants without a good grasp of English, though these groups are not likely to be voters anyway). Not to say I'm in favour of voter ID, because elections and their franchise should be as open as possible and there should be as few barriers as possible to voting.
and the reasons it's a very rare crime are that the penalties for being caught are very severe (especially for anyone involved in politics, and who else would bother?), any individual's ability to move more than a tiny handful of votes is extremely limited, the likelihood that doing so would change any particular election result is very small indeed, and the payoff if anyone actually manages to compound all of these small factors into a successful fraud is marginal (even if they are the person being elected, which they won't be).
I'm curious what impact on turnout would be expected those who think a "vast" amount of voting would be "suppressed" by demanding any of 12 different forms of ID, some of which are free at the point of access.
My guess is this would affect turnout by 0.0%
No issues if it’s a phone bill or whatever. It’s the photo bit which is problematic.
And without the photo bit it's completely pointless.
The thing that annoys me is that I would support it were it attached to a proper valid Id card - it's the lack of thinking that is the real problem here.
And I was anti-ID cards for decades until I saw them in action throughout Europe. 1 example in-person Bank Fraud is virtually impossible in Austria / Bulgaria, it's a daily occurrence here.
We don't need id cards just have straightforward voter id with fingerprint id at all the polling stations.
Fingerprint id - how does that work?
It works by confirming your fingerprint against a database. Much quicker at the polling stations whilst collation takes quite some effort.
What do you do for a living - as believe me that really wouldn't be quicker..
Hint I do ID confirmation systems as part of my job - 2 of my last 5 jobs were front end systems for bank tellers at European banks - complex ID verification was part of the job.
Remember I have zero problem with a proper ID card - my problem is with this half baked madness.
How long does it take the old bill to check an id using a fingerprint scanner..30 secs max....
Thanks for confirming you have a criminal record...
But equally databases are fast when you are running a few queries at a time (they need to be). When you are running thousands at the same time (as would be needed in your case) that is a very different issue and not one that is easily scalable....
So you have 2 problems -
1) most people don't have their fingerprints in a police database 2) the database design will need to be very different and built in a very unique way to cope with a capacity need of zero / 55 million requests / zero.
You have obviously never watched Traffic Cops or Police Interceptors. Database will take time but once there...sorted. Just the young to add on and the deceased to remove.. qed.
I would watch those programs a bit more carefully and say think why those tests only appear infrequently..
Most likely is that the cops know the majority of the villains and secondly there are only a few scanners out there at the moment. It doesnt help that the police destroyed half its fingerprint database...
You mean it doesn't have a complete set of records on it - as you implied it does.
Amazing the mental grip American politics has on our consciousness here, isn't it. This voter ID argument is classic: both sides - and this seems to split almost entirely on partisan Tory / non-Tory lines - importing the beliefs and arguments of their US counterparts in the republicans and democrats wholesale.
This is one of the troubles with sharing a language. We get their journalism and social media content and assume America is the world.
It's like a form of cosplay. Cowboys and Indians for our times. I don't actually think the conservatives are making a concerted effort at voter suppression, unlike their republican US counterparts. The UK is a very different country. But they are donning the fancy dress and playing the part because it feels like the right thing for their tribe to do, and their left wing opponents are channelling the outrage to levels worthy of the RSC, because that's what the Dems do.
Part of the clear issue, I would say, is that the policy itself was first loudly promoted during the Dominic Cummings era, at a time when a whole range of other clearly Trumpian postures and themes were being imported too, such as the "surrender bill". It's natural therefore that the left should import similar opposition. More outspoken aspects of current American progressive politics that have been imported can sometimes begin the mimesis from the left, but here it's clearly begun from the right.
This is untrue.
The policy has been on the agenda since 2014 when the Electoral Commission advocated it (in response to mounting fraud cases that were occurring eg Tower Hamlets). That was pre-Dominic Cummings era.
The policy has been worked on for years including trials in 2019. That was pre-Dominic Cummings era.
So unless Dominic Cummings has a TARDIS how does the Electoral Commission advocating for and working on this since 2014 and trials in May 2019 correspond to Dominic Cummings?
You're acting like people who can see Jesus in their toast - you're seeing the image of Cummings everywhere even where he isn't.
The thing that amuses me is that people seem to be under a misapprehension that voter ID is about suppression, or is Johnson's idea, or is Cummings idea.
The fact is that this is the Electoral Commission's idea and the Electoral Commission have been in favour of this since 2014. In that time there's been three Prime Ministers, three General Elections - and years of trials and development. Trials of voter ID occurred two years ago, organised by the Electoral Commission which had been working on this for five years by that point, while Johnson was a backbencher.
Its sad for me that Voter ID may be needed. I also have ethical qualms on the government having our ID element. But its not about suppression that's just American nonsense, just like suggesting that our Police are like America's is nonsense.
Johnson/Cummings did not promote the idea because they love quangos such as the electoral commission. The cause is clearly political and not democratic-procedural, in line with all the precedents and Johnson's established contempt for organisations like the EC. It's both a dog-whistle and a tactic, in the probably misguided transatlantic expectation that favourable voting will not be damaged.
The thing that amuses me is that people seem to be under a misapprehension that voter ID is about suppression, or is Johnson's idea, or is Cummings idea.
The fact is that this is the Electoral Commission's idea and the Electoral Commission have been in favour of this since 2014. In that time there's been three Prime Ministers, three General Elections - and years of trials and development. Trials of voter ID occurred two years ago, organised by the Electoral Commission which had been working on this for five years by that point, while Johnson was a backbencher.
Its sad for me that Voter ID may be needed. I also have ethical qualms on the government having our ID element. But its not about suppression that's just American nonsense, just like suggesting that our Police are like America's is nonsense.
Johnson/Cummings did not promote the idea because they love quangos such as the electoral commission. The cause is clearly political not democratic-procedural, in line with all the precedents and Johnson's previous contempt for organisations like the Electoral Commission. It's both a dog-whistle in the probably misguided expectation that favourable votering will not be damaged.
Johnson/Cummings did not promote the idea. This is a pre-existing idea that has already been government policy since before Johnson/Cummings and they simply haven't dropped the idea.
I'm curious what impact on turnout would be expected those who think a "vast" amount of voting would be "suppressed" by demanding any of 12 different forms of ID, some of which are free at the point of access.
My guess is this would affect turnout by 0.0%
No issues if it’s a phone bill or whatever. It’s the photo bit which is problematic.
And without the photo bit it's completely pointless.
The thing that annoys me is that I would support it were it attached to a proper valid Id card - it's the lack of thinking that is the real problem here.
And I was anti-ID cards for decades until I saw them in action throughout Europe. 1 example in-person Bank Fraud is virtually impossible in Austria / Bulgaria, it's a daily occurrence here.
We don't need id cards just have straightforward voter id with fingerprint id at all the polling stations.
Fck me, that escalated quickly! Why not retinal scanning just to be on the safe side, maybe even a DNA check?
No - we all need a microchip implanted (like my dog) and that is scanned when you vote. No need for ID cards.. Roll out the chips. No chip means - no benefits, no healthcare, nothing...
A bit of a problem if you are going to A&E because your right arm has been chopped off.
you best hope someone remembers to bring it with you.
Damn- you've spotted the obvious flaw in my plan... Oh well, omelettes and eggs and all that!
The thing that amuses me is that people seem to be under a misapprehension that voter ID is about suppression, or is Johnson's idea, or is Cummings idea.
The fact is that this is the Electoral Commission's idea and the Electoral Commission have been in favour of this since 2014. In that time there's been three Prime Ministers, three General Elections - and years of trials and development. Trials of voter ID occurred two years ago, organised by the Electoral Commission which had been working on this for five years by that point, while Johnson was a backbencher.
Its sad for me that Voter ID may be needed. I also have ethical qualms on the government having our ID element. But its not about suppression that's just American nonsense, just like suggesting that our Police are like America's is nonsense.
Question: You stated that there is 0.0% chance of any voter being deterred by ID. I asked on what personal experience of campaigning you based this on. As there has been no attempt to answer, could I ask if the answer is 0.0 experience?
Worth pointing out that apparently you know better than the Electoral Commission. After their 2019 trial they found that "several important questions remain about how an ID requirement would work in practice, particularly at a national poll with higher levels of turnout" based upon "Nearly everyone in these pilots who went to their polling station to vote was able to show ID without difficulty, as in 2018. Out of all those who went to their polling station, the proportion who couldn’t show ID and who did not return to vote ranged from 0.03% to 0.7%.
Some groups of people may find it harder than others to show ID, particularly photo ID. This includes people with accessibility challenges as well as other less frequent voters who did not attempt to vote on 2 May but are more likely to do so at a UK general election."
Note their caution - how would this work in a general election with higher turnout? Local election trials highlighted many issues, specifically "These challenges [issuing local id / replacement poll cards] could also have a significant impact on those people who apply for replacement poll cards close to the deadline, and their ability to show ID on polling day."
Any way you cut it, the impact is not 0.0%. And the poorer the area the bigger the challenges. That used to be a Labour problem. Now its a Tory problem.
Amazing the mental grip American politics has on our consciousness here, isn't it. This voter ID argument is classic: both sides - and this seems to split almost entirely on partisan Tory / non-Tory lines - importing the beliefs and arguments of their US counterparts in the republicans and democrats wholesale.
This is one of the troubles with sharing a language. We get their journalism and social media content and assume America is the world.
It's like a form of cosplay. Cowboys and Indians for our times. I don't actually think the conservatives are making a concerted effort at voter suppression, unlike their republican US counterparts. The UK is a very different country. But they are donning the fancy dress and playing the part because it feels like the right thing for their tribe to do, and their left wing opponents are channelling the outrage to levels worthy of the RSC, because that's what the Dems do.
Spot on. Just as we already know that black lives matter, so our police already don't go around arbitrarily shooting and kneeling on black men.
I'm curious what impact on turnout would be expected those who think a "vast" amount of voting would be "suppressed" by demanding any of 12 different forms of ID, some of which are free at the point of access.
My guess is this would affect turnout by 0.0%
There were 12 forms of ID in the trials but they included non-photo ID. There are not 12 forms of photo ID, and that seems to be what is now proposed.
I'm curious what impact on turnout would be expected those who think a "vast" amount of voting would be "suppressed" by demanding any of 12 different forms of ID, some of which are free at the point of access.
My guess is this would affect turnout by 0.0%
No issues if it’s a phone bill or whatever. It’s the photo bit which is problematic.
And without the photo bit it's completely pointless.
The thing that annoys me is that I would support it were it attached to a proper valid Id card - it's the lack of thinking that is the real problem here.
And I was anti-ID cards for decades until I saw them in action throughout Europe. 1 example in-person Bank Fraud is virtually impossible in Austria / Bulgaria, it's a daily occurrence here.
We don't need id cards just have straightforward voter id with fingerprint id at all the polling stations.
Fingerprint id - how does that work?
It works by confirming your fingerprint against a database. Much quicker at the polling stations whilst collation takes quite some effort.
What do you do for a living - as believe me that really wouldn't be quicker..
Hint I do ID confirmation systems as part of my job - 2 of my last 5 jobs were front end systems for bank tellers at European banks - complex ID verification was part of the job.
Remember I have zero problem with a proper ID card - my problem is with this half baked madness.
How long does it take the old bill to check an id using a fingerprint scanner..30 secs max....
Thanks for confirming you have a criminal record...
But equally databases are fast when you are running a few queries at a time (they need to be). When you are running thousands at the same time (as would be needed in your case) that is a very different issue and not one that is easily scalable....
So you have 2 problems -
1) most people don't have their fingerprints in a police database 2) the database design will need to be very different and built in a very unique way to cope with a capacity need of zero / 55 million requests / zero.
You have obviously never watched Traffic Cops or Police Interceptors. Database will take time but once there...sorted. Just the young to add on and the deceased to remove.. qed.
Looking forward to my call up to go and have my fingerprints taken at the local nick/town hall/etc.
I'm curious what impact on turnout would be expected those who think a "vast" amount of voting would be "suppressed" by demanding any of 12 different forms of ID, some of which are free at the point of access.
My guess is this would affect turnout by 0.0%
There were 12 forms of ID in the trials but they included non-photo ID. There are not 12 forms of photo ID, and that seems to be what is now proposed.
Have just spotted that Philip asked the opinion of people saying there would be "vast" suppression.
Has anyone even suggested "vast"? Other than Philip?
The thing that amuses me is that people seem to be under a misapprehension that voter ID is about suppression, or is Johnson's idea, or is Cummings idea.
The fact is that this is the Electoral Commission's idea and the Electoral Commission have been in favour of this since 2014. In that time there's been three Prime Ministers, three General Elections - and years of trials and development. Trials of voter ID occurred two years ago, organised by the Electoral Commission which had been working on this for five years by that point, while Johnson was a backbencher.
Its sad for me that Voter ID may be needed. I also have ethical qualms on the government having our ID element. But its not about suppression that's just American nonsense, just like suggesting that our Police are like America's is nonsense.
Johnson/Cummings did not promote the idea because they love quangos such as the electoral commission. The cause is clearly political not democratic-procedural, in line with all the precedents and Johnson's previous contempt for organisations like the Electoral Commission. It's both a dog-whistle in the probably misguided expectation that favourable votering will not be damaged.
Johnson/Cummings did not promote the idea. This is a pre-existing idea that has already been government policy since before Johnson/Cummings and they simply haven't dropped the idea.
It's policy now purely because of Johnson and his strategy ; a man whose opinion and heed of bodies like the electoral commission has been rock bottom since his involvement in the Leave campaign in 2016. The idea has been around even longer than 2014.
Amazing the mental grip American politics has on our consciousness here, isn't it. This voter ID argument is classic: both sides - and this seems to split almost entirely on partisan Tory / non-Tory lines - importing the beliefs and arguments of their US counterparts in the republicans and democrats wholesale.
This is one of the troubles with sharing a language. We get their journalism and social media content and assume America is the world.
It's like a form of cosplay. Cowboys and Indians for our times. I don't actually think the conservatives are making a concerted effort at voter suppression, unlike their republican US counterparts. The UK is a very different country. But they are donning the fancy dress and playing the part because it feels like the right thing for their tribe to do, and their left wing opponents are channelling the outrage to levels worthy of the RSC, because that's what the Dems do.
Agreed, we should always be careful importing America's neuroses to British politics. I note the arguments here that imposing voter ID might be more likely to disenfranchise key aspects of the Conservative coalition than the Labour one, but we're all playing our Partisan roles. That said, I do feel like it's likely to impact on who Labour Activists think their core is (the very urban poor, the homeless and immigrants without a good grasp of English, though these groups are not likely to be voters anyway). Not to say I'm in favour of voter ID, because elections and their franchise should be as open as possible and there should be as few barriers as possible to voting.
and the reasons it's a very rare crime are that the penalties for being caught are very severe (especially for anyone involved in politics, and who else would bother?), any individual's ability to move more than a tiny handful of votes is extremely limited, the likelihood that doing so would change any particular election result is very small indeed, and the payoff if anyone actually manages to compound all of these small factors into a successful fraud is marginal (even if they are the person being elected, which they won't be).
The reporting of the story is skewed to in person fraud. I believe it addresses postal vote harvesting as well, where significant effects on the result are more likely. It seems sense to cover all the options in the one proposal.
The thing that amuses me is that people seem to be under a misapprehension that voter ID is about suppression, or is Johnson's idea, or is Cummings idea.
The fact is that this is the Electoral Commission's idea and the Electoral Commission have been in favour of this since 2014. In that time there's been three Prime Ministers, three General Elections - and years of trials and development. Trials of voter ID occurred two years ago, organised by the Electoral Commission which had been working on this for five years by that point, while Johnson was a backbencher.
Its sad for me that Voter ID may be needed. I also have ethical qualms on the government having our ID element. But its not about suppression that's just American nonsense, just like suggesting that our Police are like America's is nonsense.
Johnson/Cummings did not promote the idea because they love quangos such as the electoral commission. The cause is clearly political not democratic-procedural, in line with all the precedents and Johnson's previous contempt for organisations like the Electoral Commission. It's both a dog-whistle in the probably misguided expectation that favourable votering will not be damaged.
Johnson/Cummings did not promote the idea. This is a pre-existing idea that has already been government policy since before Johnson/Cummings and they simply haven't dropped the idea.
Which is why opposition to it does not need to rely on inferring their motivation.
The thing that amuses me is that people seem to be under a misapprehension that voter ID is about suppression, or is Johnson's idea, or is Cummings idea.
The fact is that this is the Electoral Commission's idea and the Electoral Commission have been in favour of this since 2014. In that time there's been three Prime Ministers, three General Elections - and years of trials and development. Trials of voter ID occurred two years ago, organised by the Electoral Commission which had been working on this for five years by that point, while Johnson was a backbencher.
Its sad for me that Voter ID may be needed. I also have ethical qualms on the government having our ID element. But its not about suppression that's just American nonsense, just like suggesting that our Police are like America's is nonsense.
Question: You stated that there is 0.0% chance of any voter being deterred by ID. I asked on what personal experience of campaigning you based this on. As there has been no attempt to answer, could I ask if the answer is 0.0 experience?
Worth pointing out that apparently you know better than the Electoral Commission. After their 2019 trial they found that "several important questions remain about how an ID requirement would work in practice, particularly at a national poll with higher levels of turnout" based upon "Nearly everyone in these pilots who went to their polling station to vote was able to show ID without difficulty, as in 2018. Out of all those who went to their polling station, the proportion who couldn’t show ID and who did not return to vote ranged from 0.03% to 0.7%.
Some groups of people may find it harder than others to show ID, particularly photo ID. This includes people with accessibility challenges as well as other less frequent voters who did not attempt to vote on 2 May but are more likely to do so at a UK general election."
Note their caution - how would this work in a general election with higher turnout? Local election trials highlighted many issues, specifically "These challenges [issuing local id / replacement poll cards] could also have a significant impact on those people who apply for replacement poll cards close to the deadline, and their ability to show ID on polling day."
Any way you cut it, the impact is not 0.0%. And the poorer the area the bigger the challenges. That used to be a Labour problem. Now its a Tory problem.
No you're misquoting me, I never said there is a 0.0% chance of any voter being deterred by ID. What I said is that I expect the impact on turnout would be 0.0%
Turnout in 2019 was 67.52% including spoilt ballots with 32,131,661 votes cast - so to impact turnout by 0.1% is 47,587 eligible voters and 0.0% is 23,793 or fewer.
After the 2019 trials did the Electoral Commission recommend proceeding with Voter ID or to stop it?
Interesting observation on possibly poorly designed ballot paper:
87,214 Londoners had their mayoral votes rejected because they accidentally voted twice in the ‘first preference’ column. That’s basically the equivalent of a full Wembley Stadium or - to put it another way - 1 in 30 of all votes cast in the election.
The thing that amuses me is that people seem to be under a misapprehension that voter ID is about suppression, or is Johnson's idea, or is Cummings idea.
The fact is that this is the Electoral Commission's idea and the Electoral Commission have been in favour of this since 2014. In that time there's been three Prime Ministers, three General Elections - and years of trials and development. Trials of voter ID occurred two years ago, organised by the Electoral Commission which had been working on this for five years by that point, while Johnson was a backbencher.
Its sad for me that Voter ID may be needed. I also have ethical qualms on the government having our ID element. But its not about suppression that's just American nonsense, just like suggesting that our Police are like America's is nonsense.
Johnson/Cummings did not promote the idea because they love quangos such as the electoral commission. The cause is clearly political not democratic-procedural, in line with all the precedents and Johnson's previous contempt for organisations like the Electoral Commission. It's both a dog-whistle in the probably misguided expectation that favourable votering will not be damaged.
Johnson/Cummings did not promote the idea. This is a pre-existing idea that has already been government policy since before Johnson/Cummings and they simply haven't dropped the idea.
Which is why opposition to it does not need to rely on inferring their motivation.
I don't agree here. If a politician has imported a whole range of other Trumpian themes, it's perfectly reasonable to assume another policy proposal comes has a similar origin, especially if said politician has paid no heed or interest whatsoever to the quango researching it in the past ; quite the opposite, in fact.
My view of woke is that it is the transfer of capitalism and individuality into identity and politics.
So the fact there are over 100+ genders means that you can look through the list of these and identify your brand. We seem the same with sexual preference where the LGBT I grew up with and can understand is now replaced with an alphabet of options.
We also see the same with race. I listened to an interesting programme yesterday on radio 4 about those who are black but have a mixed heritage called passing. I thought it was interesting and helped me but the thing I found difficult was that for those people who feel they can't talk about these issues now it was a negative, but also those who talk and use the wrong language are also described in a negative fashion. I prefer to see the world where people try to be generous and kind but might make mistakes.
The recent discussion around Prince Harry and Archie and his skin colour could be viewed from more than one angle. I know if I spoke to a friend and relative about the skin colour of their child it would not be in a derogatory way, just to make sure that they were starting to consider the issues around identity that it would bring up for the child.
"just to make sure that they were starting to consider the issues around identity that it would bring up for the child."
That's quite a chilling quote imo. And I caught snippets of the R4 prog when they were discussing Rachel Dolezal. I couldn't help thinking in my insulated white, middle class way, how it was extraordinary that people get so exercised about someone wanting to identify as something else. Why shouldn't they? Cultural appropriation is a crime now? Better cancel all those Madness features we are hearing on the radio right now.
It seems very strange. Is it "woke gone mad"? Not entirely sure but we are certainly in the midst of growing pains, culture-wise.
Amazing the mental grip American politics has on our consciousness here, isn't it. This voter ID argument is classic: both sides - and this seems to split almost entirely on partisan Tory / non-Tory lines - importing the beliefs and arguments of their US counterparts in the republicans and democrats wholesale.
This is one of the troubles with sharing a language. We get their journalism and social media content and assume America is the world.
It's like a form of cosplay. Cowboys and Indians for our times. I don't actually think the conservatives are making a concerted effort at voter suppression, unlike their republican US counterparts. The UK is a very different country. But they are donning the fancy dress and playing the part because it feels like the right thing for their tribe to do, and their left wing opponents are channelling the outrage to levels worthy of the RSC, because that's what the Dems do.
Agreed, we should always be careful importing America's neuroses to British politics. I note the arguments here that imposing voter ID might be more likely to disenfranchise key aspects of the Conservative coalition than the Labour one, but we're all playing our Partisan roles. That said, I do feel like it's likely to impact on who Labour Activists think their core is (the very urban poor, the homeless and immigrants without a good grasp of English, though these groups are not likely to be voters anyway). Not to say I'm in favour of voter ID, because elections and their franchise should be as open as possible and there should be as few barriers as possible to voting.
and the reasons it's a very rare crime are that the penalties for being caught are very severe (especially for anyone involved in politics, and who else would bother?), any individual's ability to move more than a tiny handful of votes is extremely limited, the likelihood that doing so would change any particular election result is very small indeed, and the payoff if anyone actually manages to compound all of these small factors into a successful fraud is marginal (even if they are the person being elected, which they won't be).
The reporting of the story is skewed to in person fraud. I believe it addresses postal vote harvesting as well, where significant effects on the result are more likely. It seems sense to cover all the options in the one proposal.
I don't see how photo ID would work for postal voting, and am not aware it's part of the proposal
But the same applies. Say I'm a candidate, or someone nefarious that a candidate has 'employed' to try and cast fraudulent postal votes. I can find out the list of postal voters (but only from a declared agent - so already a hurdle) and I can find out when they will be posted.
So I call round at the houses and hope to fish them out of letterboxes, or recover them from the halls of HMOs. In the old days before signature cross-checking, that might have worked, provided that the recipient wasn't bothered about voting (unlikely if they've applied for a PV) or moved away. If the person wants to vote, they're likely to complain to the council when their vote doesnt arrive, and thereupon a note would be put to see if that vote was returned, immediately triggering a risk. Nowadays, with signature cross-checking, the likelihood that any votes I stole would pass the verification is small indeed. And the missing votes would again trigger complaints that would flag a problem - particularly if the missing voters were concentrated in one area.
Or I can try to bribe or threaten the postal voters in order to get them to complete them in front of me. How risky is that, and how likely, out of the blue, to succeed?
In the hypothetical of a father of a large family pressuring the others in his household to vote a certain way, he's going to pressure them to supply whatever ID is required, so that circumstance isn't pertinent to the proposal in any case.
Does the Government's proposed ban on conversion therapy (gay, sexual identity) apply only to children or does it include consenting adults? If the latter, it seems grossly illiberal. If someone seeks therapy for an unwelcome (to them) feeling or obsession, let them.
The thing that amuses me is that people seem to be under a misapprehension that voter ID is about suppression, or is Johnson's idea, or is Cummings idea.
The fact is that this is the Electoral Commission's idea and the Electoral Commission have been in favour of this since 2014. In that time there's been three Prime Ministers, three General Elections - and years of trials and development. Trials of voter ID occurred two years ago, organised by the Electoral Commission which had been working on this for five years by that point, while Johnson was a backbencher.
Its sad for me that Voter ID may be needed. I also have ethical qualms on the government having our ID element. But its not about suppression that's just American nonsense, just like suggesting that our Police are like America's is nonsense.
Question: You stated that there is 0.0% chance of any voter being deterred by ID. I asked on what personal experience of campaigning you based this on. As there has been no attempt to answer, could I ask if the answer is 0.0 experience?
Worth pointing out that apparently you know better than the Electoral Commission. After their 2019 trial they found that "several important questions remain about how an ID requirement would work in practice, particularly at a national poll with higher levels of turnout" based upon "Nearly everyone in these pilots who went to their polling station to vote was able to show ID without difficulty, as in 2018. Out of all those who went to their polling station, the proportion who couldn’t show ID and who did not return to vote ranged from 0.03% to 0.7%.
Some groups of people may find it harder than others to show ID, particularly photo ID. This includes people with accessibility challenges as well as other less frequent voters who did not attempt to vote on 2 May but are more likely to do so at a UK general election."
Note their caution - how would this work in a general election with higher turnout? Local election trials highlighted many issues, specifically "These challenges [issuing local id / replacement poll cards] could also have a significant impact on those people who apply for replacement poll cards close to the deadline, and their ability to show ID on polling day."
Any way you cut it, the impact is not 0.0%. And the poorer the area the bigger the challenges. That used to be a Labour problem. Now its a Tory problem.
No you're misquoting me, I never said there is a 0.0% chance of any voter being deterred by ID. What I said is that I expect the impact on turnout would be 0.0%
Turnout in 2019 was 67.52% including spoilt ballots with 32,131,661 votes cast - so to impact turnout by 0.1% is 47,587 eligible voters and 0.0% is 23,793 or fewer.
After the 2019 trials did the Electoral Commission recommend proceeding with Voter ID or to stop it?
the proportion who couldn’t show ID and who did not return to vote ranged from 0.03% to 0.7% - now that may be in rounding error territory but it's not 0.
The thing that amuses me is that people seem to be under a misapprehension that voter ID is about suppression, or is Johnson's idea, or is Cummings idea.
The fact is that this is the Electoral Commission's idea and the Electoral Commission have been in favour of this since 2014. In that time there's been three Prime Ministers, three General Elections - and years of trials and development. Trials of voter ID occurred two years ago, organised by the Electoral Commission which had been working on this for five years by that point, while Johnson was a backbencher.
Its sad for me that Voter ID may be needed. I also have ethical qualms on the government having our ID element. But its not about suppression that's just American nonsense, just like suggesting that our Police are like America's is nonsense.
Question: You stated that there is 0.0% chance of any voter being deterred by ID. I asked on what personal experience of campaigning you based this on. As there has been no attempt to answer, could I ask if the answer is 0.0 experience?
Worth pointing out that apparently you know better than the Electoral Commission. After their 2019 trial they found that "several important questions remain about how an ID requirement would work in practice, particularly at a national poll with higher levels of turnout" based upon "Nearly everyone in these pilots who went to their polling station to vote was able to show ID without difficulty, as in 2018. Out of all those who went to their polling station, the proportion who couldn’t show ID and who did not return to vote ranged from 0.03% to 0.7%.
Some groups of people may find it harder than others to show ID, particularly photo ID. This includes people with accessibility challenges as well as other less frequent voters who did not attempt to vote on 2 May but are more likely to do so at a UK general election."
Note their caution - how would this work in a general election with higher turnout? Local election trials highlighted many issues, specifically "These challenges [issuing local id / replacement poll cards] could also have a significant impact on those people who apply for replacement poll cards close to the deadline, and their ability to show ID on polling day."
Any way you cut it, the impact is not 0.0%. And the poorer the area the bigger the challenges. That used to be a Labour problem. Now its a Tory problem.
No you're misquoting me, I never said there is a 0.0% chance of any voter being deterred by ID. What I said is that I expect the impact on turnout would be 0.0%
Turnout in 2019 was 67.52% including spoilt ballots with 32,131,661 votes cast - so to impact turnout by 0.1% is 47,587 eligible voters and 0.0% is 23,793 or fewer.
After the 2019 trials did the Electoral Commission recommend proceeding with Voter ID or to stop it?
As you patently refuse to answer the question I assume that you have zero personal experience of campaigning.
Impact on turnout is driven by all kinds of reasons. The candidates are all shit. Its raining. My kids are playing up. I'm waiting for my partner to get home from work. Where is the polling station. I'll do it later. I'm too tired now. Etc. Etc. Etc.
I have no expectation that someone will answer the door on knocking-out and say "I'm not voting cos of voter ID". But it just drives the list of excuses that non-voters make for why they aren't going out to vote.
Finally, you ask if the EC recommended going ahead or stopping voter ID. The answer is neither. "However, we are not able to draw definitive conclusions, from these pilots, about how an ID requirement would work in practice, particularly at a national poll with higher levels of turnout or in areas with different socio-demographic profiles not fully represented in the pilot scheme.
If the policy is to be developed further, Government and Parliament should consider carefully the available evidence about the impact of different approaches on the accessibility and security of polling station voting in Great Britain."
Whilst I'm no fan of the erosion of civil liberties, showing a photo ID in order to vote is an excellent proposal for protecting democracy. It will be popular with mainstream voters.
Complaining about this is woke.
Be careful what you wish for. ID cards to vote is explicitly designed to disenfranchise the poor. The problem is that the poor now vote Tory, so looking at this from a purely pro-Tory position it is Fucking Stupid. "Ah but you can download an ID form for free from your council" I hear supporters saying.
Have you ever campaigned? Knocked on doors? Tried to persuade the "I don't vote mate" crown to vote. Stick another barrier in front and they absolutely won't bother. The Tories problem is that post Brexit they have converted a decent number of non-voters to voting Tory. They all drop off at the next election. Along with the angry pensioners who traditionally sustain them.
You may say it will be popular. And you're right, amongst your kind of mainstream voters. Until you see the effect on your party. Then it won't be popular.
Interesting. Seen elsewhere: "It seems that 21 out of the top 30 constituencies for no passports are Conservative held and that 10 of them are 2019 gains."
Amazing the mental grip American politics has on our consciousness here, isn't it. This voter ID argument is classic: both sides - and this seems to split almost entirely on partisan Tory / non-Tory lines - importing the beliefs and arguments of their US counterparts in the republicans and democrats wholesale.
This is one of the troubles with sharing a language. We get their journalism and social media content and assume America is the world.
It's like a form of cosplay. Cowboys and Indians for our times. I don't actually think the conservatives are making a concerted effort at voter suppression, unlike their republican US counterparts. The UK is a very different country. But they are donning the fancy dress and playing the part because it feels like the right thing for their tribe to do, and their left wing opponents are channelling the outrage to levels worthy of the RSC, because that's what the Dems do.
Agreed, we should always be careful importing America's neuroses to British politics. I note the arguments here that imposing voter ID might be more likely to disenfranchise key aspects of the Conservative coalition than the Labour one, but we're all playing our Partisan roles. That said, I do feel like it's likely to impact on who Labour Activists think their core is (the very urban poor, the homeless and immigrants without a good grasp of English, though these groups are not likely to be voters anyway). Not to say I'm in favour of voter ID, because elections and their franchise should be as open as possible and there should be as few barriers as possible to voting.
and the reasons it's a very rare crime are that the penalties for being caught are very severe (especially for anyone involved in politics, and who else would bother?), any individual's ability to move more than a tiny handful of votes is extremely limited, the likelihood that doing so would change any particular election result is very small indeed, and the payoff if anyone actually manages to compound all of these small factors into a successful fraud is marginal (even if they are the person being elected, which they won't be).
The reporting of the story is skewed to in person fraud. I believe it addresses postal vote harvesting as well, where significant effects on the result are more likely. It seems sense to cover all the options in the one proposal.
When I was told that I had already voted when I turned up to the polling booth in 2019 (have I mentioned that on PB before?) I immediately thought cock-up not conspiracy. I'm sure that accounts for a large number of such instances.
Amazing the mental grip American politics has on our consciousness here, isn't it. This voter ID argument is classic: both sides - and this seems to split almost entirely on partisan Tory / non-Tory lines - importing the beliefs and arguments of their US counterparts in the republicans and democrats wholesale.
This is one of the troubles with sharing a language. We get their journalism and social media content and assume America is the world.
It's like a form of cosplay. Cowboys and Indians for our times. I don't actually think the conservatives are making a concerted effort at voter suppression, unlike their republican US counterparts. The UK is a very different country. But they are donning the fancy dress and playing the part because it feels like the right thing for their tribe to do, and their left wing opponents are channelling the outrage to levels worthy of the RSC, because that's what the Dems do.
Spot on. Just as we already know that black lives matter, so our police already don't go around arbitrarily shooting and kneeling on black men.
I don't think it should go down party lines but is part of the culture background of the current realignment. I was against ID cards in the 2000s as I do t think I should have to prove who I am if some official approaches me. I am fine with providing ID for voting as you have to provide ID to do all sorts of things like banking, buying alcohol etc. I've already had to register to vote and provide an address. This will not have 0% effect, but I cannot see more than ainor deterrent for voting in person, and I don't believe that those forgetting ID will be disproportionately aligned to one political group.
Interesting observation on possibly poorly designed ballot paper:
87,214 Londoners had their mayoral votes rejected because they accidentally voted twice in the ‘first preference’ column. That’s basically the equivalent of a full Wembley Stadium or - to put it another way - 1 in 30 of all votes cast in the election.
Even in complicated elections eg Guernsey's ("First 38 past the post with 119 candidates") the rejected ballot rate was a lot lower - 1 in 160.
Clearly the form was poorly designed, and lessons need to be learned. Most people still did it correctly, and surely instructions were given on receipt of the slip. Is there evidence that more problems occurred during postal voting (so no direct instruction given)?
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
I'd have thought the biggest issue for fraud would occur on postal votes inside the household.
It's very easy for the dominant householder to open all the ballots, complete them, insist on signatures and send them off again.
That’s intimidation, not fraud.
Eh? You what? Someone's ballot being taken away and denied to them and then completed on false pretences?
Fraud. It's just that person is guilty of two offences.
Postal ballots have virtually no checks on them. A better way might be to make them available for completion in advance but only at post offices or at council sites by the voter.
If they can't travel (at all) to vote due to disability or other issue then that needs assuring.
A postal vote requires my signature (checked against a historic one) alongside other information - I have one as I always used to be away on election note (2017 I was in India so couldn't even visit this site to read the fun).
If anything my postal vote is more rigorously checked than any in person vote.
Your postal vote is not checked to ensure you have not sold it to anyone else, or been blackmailed or forced to cast it in a particular way, or that it is one of several dozen that have been filled in by a party activist.
Postal votes are far more open to fraud than in-person votes.
Following the "should we count on a Friday" debate its probably worth noting the EC findings from the last trial.
"The pilot scheme has shown that some ID options would be more complicated for Returning Officers and polling station staff to deliver.
The relative security benefits of these options would need to be considered alongside the impact on the administration of election procedures, particularly polling station processes."
The more of a ball-ache it is to run an election the longer it will take to validate and then count the votes, so if this does come in a shift to Friday counts will look ever more appealing. Will Returning Officers and councils be given additional resources to pay for all this? Course they won't! So the overtime bill will need to be cut and night counts cost more dollah than day counts.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
Amazing the mental grip American politics has on our consciousness here, isn't it. This voter ID argument is classic: both sides - and this seems to split almost entirely on partisan Tory / non-Tory lines - importing the beliefs and arguments of their US counterparts in the republicans and democrats wholesale.
This is one of the troubles with sharing a language. We get their journalism and social media content and assume America is the world.
It's like a form of cosplay. Cowboys and Indians for our times. I don't actually think the conservatives are making a concerted effort at voter suppression, unlike their republican US counterparts. The UK is a very different country. But they are donning the fancy dress and playing the part because it feels like the right thing for their tribe to do, and their left wing opponents are channelling the outrage to levels worthy of the RSC, because that's what the Dems do.
Agreed, we should always be careful importing America's neuroses to British politics. I note the arguments here that imposing voter ID might be more likely to disenfranchise key aspects of the Conservative coalition than the Labour one, but we're all playing our Partisan roles. That said, I do feel like it's likely to impact on who Labour Activists think their core is (the very urban poor, the homeless and immigrants without a good grasp of English, though these groups are not likely to be voters anyway). Not to say I'm in favour of voter ID, because elections and their franchise should be as open as possible and there should be as few barriers as possible to voting.
and the reasons it's a very rare crime are that the penalties for being caught are very severe (especially for anyone involved in politics, and who else would bother?), any individual's ability to move more than a tiny handful of votes is extremely limited, the likelihood that doing so would change any particular election result is very small indeed, and the payoff if anyone actually manages to compound all of these small factors into a successful fraud is marginal (even if they are the person being elected, which they won't be).
The reporting of the story is skewed to in person fraud. I believe it addresses postal vote harvesting as well, where significant effects on the result are more likely. It seems sense to cover all the options in the one proposal.
I don't see how photo ID would work for postal voting, and am not aware it's part of the proposal
But the same applies. Say I'm a candidate, or someone nefarious that a candidate has 'employed' to try and cast fraudulent postal votes. I can find out the list of postal voters (but only from a declared agent - so already a hurdle) and I can find out when they will be posted.
So I call round at the houses and hope to fish them out of letterboxes, or recover them from the halls of HMOs. In the old days before signature cross-checking, that might have worked, provided that the recipient wasn't bothered about voting (unlikely if they've applied for a PV) or moved away. If the person wants to vote, they're likely to complain to the council when their vote doesnt arrive, and thereupon a note would be put to see if that vote was returned, immediately triggering a risk. Nowadays, with signature cross-checking, the likelihood that any votes I stole would pass the verification is small indeed. And the missing votes would again trigger complaints that would flag a problem - particularly if the missing voters were concentrated in one area.
Or I can try to bribe or threaten the postal voters in order to get them to complete them in front of me. How risky is that, and how likely, out of the blue, to succeed?
In the hypothetical of a father of a large family pressuring the others in his household to vote a certain way, he's going to pressure them to supply whatever ID is required, so that circumstance isn't pertinent to the proposal in any case.
I thought that it was the postal votes cast by non-existent and deceased people that was more of a problem.
I'm curious what impact on turnout would be expected those who think a "vast" amount of voting would be "suppressed" by demanding any of 12 different forms of ID, some of which are free at the point of access.
My guess is this would affect turnout by 0.0%
There were 12 forms of ID in the trials but they included non-photo ID. There are not 12 forms of photo ID, and that seems to be what is now proposed.
Have just spotted that Philip asked the opinion of people saying there would be "vast" suppression.
Has anyone even suggested "vast"? Other than Philip?
Its a spectacularly stupid move by the Tories. More proof that Liar is a brilliant tactician (this is dog whistle politics for people who think asian voters rig elections) but a stupid strategist as it will disbar many of the people who have given him an 82 seat majority.
Were the Tories to spend months tracking down their potential voters and doing everything they can to get them fully registered it won't be a problem. They will also need to personally remind voters that they need ID in the days leading up to the election.
Unless they do that the first time a lot of voters are going to discover that they can't vote will be on the day of the election..
It really is a very crap policy and shows how little Boris thinks things through - he sees the idea but he doesn't seem to think through the consequences and how they may impact him.
Sorry I wrote the wrong word, but how many were you thinking of as many, or lots of voters?
As for voter ID I am torn. It is an important activity, perhaps the most important one, and it makes sense to ensure that people are who they say they are for this activity. But I loathe giving ID for anything. When I walk into a City building for a meeting and am asked for my ID or for them to take a photo I visibly scowl.
Of course it's much worse in Yurp where they ask for your passport and don't give it back until you are leaving the building. Bloody continentals.
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
Here you go again "chunks". But I was wrong to write "vast".
How big of a "chunk" are you thinking about? What percentage of the electorate in your eyes will be put off voting because of this?
On Scotland, Cameron's old tutor at Oxford Vernon Bogdanor suggests partitioning Scotland if it ever voted for independence and enabling some Unionist areas to stay in the UK
Why? If you believe in self determination - as Scot Nats must - why do they have an arbitrary historical line as the boundary. If a clear majority of the Borders want to stay in the UK why should they be ripped out against their will?
If a clear majority of Scots want to stay in the EU why should they be ripped out against their will? Etc
62% of Scots voted to Remain in the EU in 2016 but only around 50% of Scottish voters voted for Nationalist parties last Thursday, clearly about a fifth of Scottish Remain voters are happy to stay in the UK now Brexit has been delivered but with an EU trade deal for the UK while virtually all Scottish Leave voters still want to stay in the UK.
I'd have thought the biggest issue for fraud would occur on postal votes inside the household.
It's very easy for the dominant householder to open all the ballots, complete them, insist on signatures and send them off again.
That’s intimidation, not fraud.
Eh? You what? Someone's ballot being taken away and denied to them and then completed on false pretences?
Fraud. It's just that person is guilty of two offences.
Postal ballots have virtually no checks on them. A better way might be to make them available for completion in advance but only at post offices or at council sites by the voter.
If they can't travel (at all) to vote due to disability or other issue then that needs assuring.
A postal vote requires my signature (checked against a historic one) alongside other information - I have one as I always used to be away on election note (2017 I was in India so couldn't even visit this site to read the fun).
If anything my postal vote is more rigorously checked than any in person vote.
Your postal vote is not checked to ensure you have not sold it to anyone else, or been blackmailed or forced to cast it in a particular way, or that it is one of several dozen that have been filled in by a party activist.
Postal votes are far more open to fraud than in-person votes.
Except for the last one - how does that differ with an in-person vote.
The thing that amuses me is that people seem to be under a misapprehension that voter ID is about suppression, or is Johnson's idea, or is Cummings idea.
The fact is that this is the Electoral Commission's idea and the Electoral Commission have been in favour of this since 2014. In that time there's been three Prime Ministers, three General Elections - and years of trials and development. Trials of voter ID occurred two years ago, organised by the Electoral Commission which had been working on this for five years by that point, while Johnson was a backbencher.
Its sad for me that Voter ID may be needed. I also have ethical qualms on the government having our ID element. But its not about suppression that's just American nonsense, just like suggesting that our Police are like America's is nonsense.
Question: You stated that there is 0.0% chance of any voter being deterred by ID. I asked on what personal experience of campaigning you based this on. As there has been no attempt to answer, could I ask if the answer is 0.0 experience?
Worth pointing out that apparently you know better than the Electoral Commission. After their 2019 trial they found that "several important questions remain about how an ID requirement would work in practice, particularly at a national poll with higher levels of turnout" based upon "Nearly everyone in these pilots who went to their polling station to vote was able to show ID without difficulty, as in 2018. Out of all those who went to their polling station, the proportion who couldn’t show ID and who did not return to vote ranged from 0.03% to 0.7%.
Some groups of people may find it harder than others to show ID, particularly photo ID. This includes people with accessibility challenges as well as other less frequent voters who did not attempt to vote on 2 May but are more likely to do so at a UK general election."
Note their caution - how would this work in a general election with higher turnout? Local election trials highlighted many issues, specifically "These challenges [issuing local id / replacement poll cards] could also have a significant impact on those people who apply for replacement poll cards close to the deadline, and their ability to show ID on polling day."
Any way you cut it, the impact is not 0.0%. And the poorer the area the bigger the challenges. That used to be a Labour problem. Now its a Tory problem.
No you're misquoting me, I never said there is a 0.0% chance of any voter being deterred by ID. What I said is that I expect the impact on turnout would be 0.0%
Turnout in 2019 was 67.52% including spoilt ballots with 32,131,661 votes cast - so to impact turnout by 0.1% is 47,587 eligible voters and 0.0% is 23,793 or fewer.
After the 2019 trials did the Electoral Commission recommend proceeding with Voter ID or to stop it?
the proportion who couldn’t show ID and who did not return to vote ranged from 0.03% to 0.7% - now that may be in rounding error territory but it's not 0.
I didn't say 0, I said 0.0% impact on turnout.
0.03% at one significant figure is 0.0% of turnout.
The thing that amuses me is that people seem to be under a misapprehension that voter ID is about suppression, or is Johnson's idea, or is Cummings idea.
The fact is that this is the Electoral Commission's idea and the Electoral Commission have been in favour of this since 2014. In that time there's been three Prime Ministers, three General Elections - and years of trials and development. Trials of voter ID occurred two years ago, organised by the Electoral Commission which had been working on this for five years by that point, while Johnson was a backbencher.
Its sad for me that Voter ID may be needed. I also have ethical qualms on the government having our ID element. But its not about suppression that's just American nonsense, just like suggesting that our Police are like America's is nonsense.
Question: You stated that there is 0.0% chance of any voter being deterred by ID. I asked on what personal experience of campaigning you based this on. As there has been no attempt to answer, could I ask if the answer is 0.0 experience?
Worth pointing out that apparently you know better than the Electoral Commission. After their 2019 trial they found that "several important questions remain about how an ID requirement would work in practice, particularly at a national poll with higher levels of turnout" based upon "Nearly everyone in these pilots who went to their polling station to vote was able to show ID without difficulty, as in 2018. Out of all those who went to their polling station, the proportion who couldn’t show ID and who did not return to vote ranged from 0.03% to 0.7%.
Some groups of people may find it harder than others to show ID, particularly photo ID. This includes people with accessibility challenges as well as other less frequent voters who did not attempt to vote on 2 May but are more likely to do so at a UK general election."
Note their caution - how would this work in a general election with higher turnout? Local election trials highlighted many issues, specifically "These challenges [issuing local id / replacement poll cards] could also have a significant impact on those people who apply for replacement poll cards close to the deadline, and their ability to show ID on polling day."
Any way you cut it, the impact is not 0.0%. And the poorer the area the bigger the challenges. That used to be a Labour problem. Now its a Tory problem.
No you're misquoting me, I never said there is a 0.0% chance of any voter being deterred by ID. What I said is that I expect the impact on turnout would be 0.0%
Turnout in 2019 was 67.52% including spoilt ballots with 32,131,661 votes cast - so to impact turnout by 0.1% is 47,587 eligible voters and 0.0% is 23,793 or fewer.
After the 2019 trials did the Electoral Commission recommend proceeding with Voter ID or to stop it?
the proportion who couldn’t show ID and who did not return to vote ranged from 0.03% to 0.7% - now that may be in rounding error territory but it's not 0.
I didn't say 0, I said 0.0% impact on turnout.
0.03% at one significant figure is 0.0% of turnout.
Given that 0.03 to 0.7 will be a bell curve - it's not going to be 0.0%
Amazing the mental grip American politics has on our consciousness here, isn't it. This voter ID argument is classic: both sides - and this seems to split almost entirely on partisan Tory / non-Tory lines - importing the beliefs and arguments of their US counterparts in the republicans and democrats wholesale.
This is one of the troubles with sharing a language. We get their journalism and social media content and assume America is the world.
It's like a form of cosplay. Cowboys and Indians for our times. I don't actually think the conservatives are making a concerted effort at voter suppression, unlike their republican US counterparts. The UK is a very different country. But they are donning the fancy dress and playing the part because it feels like the right thing for their tribe to do, and their left wing opponents are channelling the outrage to levels worthy of the RSC, because that's what the Dems do.
Agreed, we should always be careful importing America's neuroses to British politics. I note the arguments here that imposing voter ID might be more likely to disenfranchise key aspects of the Conservative coalition than the Labour one, but we're all playing our Partisan roles. That said, I do feel like it's likely to impact on who Labour Activists think their core is (the very urban poor, the homeless and immigrants without a good grasp of English, though these groups are not likely to be voters anyway). Not to say I'm in favour of voter ID, because elections and their franchise should be as open as possible and there should be as few barriers as possible to voting.
and the reasons it's a very rare crime are that the penalties for being caught are very severe (especially for anyone involved in politics, and who else would bother?), any individual's ability to move more than a tiny handful of votes is extremely limited, the likelihood that doing so would change any particular election result is very small indeed, and the payoff if anyone actually manages to compound all of these small factors into a successful fraud is marginal (even if they are the person being elected, which they won't be).
I've recently been reading Caro's Means of Ascent (amazing book) and was struck by some of the practices that went on in Texas politics but also how much effort it was to steal an election, but it certainly was possible. It certainly did make me think again about the security of electoral systems, though I'm not sure voter ID would have helped in many of these cases (for example County Judges just counting ballots in the privacy of their own home).
It also made me reflect on the different attitudes towards voting and elections. America seems to have this narrative of an incorruptible democracy, a great human experiment gilded in the divinity of Republic as a guiding beacon for all mankind. We had rotten boroughs and a creeping extension of the franchise. Open and expected electoral corruption was always a well known part of our political history but the deck has never seemed stacked in the same way as it was (and still can be) in America. I feel I'm grasping (or reaching!) at something here, to do with the stories we tell ourselves, but I'm unable to articulate the point. Voting feels more functional here than the narrative we get of American elections from American news media.
The thing that amuses me is that people seem to be under a misapprehension that voter ID is about suppression, or is Johnson's idea, or is Cummings idea.
The fact is that this is the Electoral Commission's idea and the Electoral Commission have been in favour of this since 2014. In that time there's been three Prime Ministers, three General Elections - and years of trials and development. Trials of voter ID occurred two years ago, organised by the Electoral Commission which had been working on this for five years by that point, while Johnson was a backbencher.
Its sad for me that Voter ID may be needed. I also have ethical qualms on the government having our ID element. But its not about suppression that's just American nonsense, just like suggesting that our Police are like America's is nonsense.
The point is though voter id is not needed. There are two ways of cheating without voter id under our current system and there are:
a) Voting as someone else who is genuinely on the register
b) Adding fictitious people onto the register and voting as them
a) As pointed out on a previous thread by myself a) is very ineffective, although I have come across it once. The reasons are you have to be aware that the real voter isn't turning up, which you can surmise by canvas returns, but is not certain, you have to be sure the real voter isn't recognizable to anyone in the polling station or around you and most importantly you can probably only do one vote as may be recognised if you keep turning up. So there is a very high chance of getting caught and your impact will be minimal (just a few votes).
b) This method can garner many more votes, but you still have the problem that you need a team of people to do as otherwise you will be recognised. You will need 20 people to get just 20 votes. You can spread it across lots of polling stations, but that means you have to set up lots of fictitious voters in different locations which isn't easy as you need real addresses. You need people in on the scam at these addresses or risk being picked up by the residents at these addresses who get polling cards with the wrong names on them. And of course unless you put 20 odd people on the address you again won't garner many votes and of course returning officers look out for large households.
Tightening up registration is the best way of improving b) although generally it isn't a problem, although has been done a few times. We know cos they get caught.
I am aware of a) once [because to do it to any effect is insane] and b) several times.
To do these to any effect (i.e. more than a handful of votes) you are almost certain to get caught.
Whilst I'm no fan of the erosion of civil liberties, showing a photo ID in order to vote is an excellent proposal for protecting democracy. It will be popular with mainstream voters.
Complaining about this is woke.
No it isn’t. It’s fundamentally unBritish. Like vaccine passports.
And I suspect is being introduced for the same reason - to bring in ID cards by stealth.
Which is (a) a sign of cowardly this government is that it doesn’t have the fortitude to admit it and (b) will mean that all the safeguards we would need against our very corrupt and ineffectual civil service misusing them will not be put in place.
ID cards seems to be beloved of the civil service as it seems like who ever gets into power eventually decides, in modern times, that theyd like to give it a go. So the purported reasons change, and the motivation of the politicians change, but the government machine is determined to have it.
Despite jokes I dont generally buy the Yes Minister view of the civil service with it's own agendas too much, but on this issue it seems like it just seeks a way to persuade whoever is in power.
Sadly, in recent years, it has become more obvious that Yes, Minister was seen as a documentary training course by those currently running the Civil Service.
I think that's because Sir Humphrey was sinister but also a cool, impressive man. Notably while Hacker got round him in occasion for good reasons, some of the most notable examples were where Humphrey was actually in the right (eg when Hacker undercut a chemical plant project because of political pressure, when he blackmailed Humphrey into lying about him misleading the House).
More people need to model themselves after Bernard, like me.
Yes, Minister might be the worst thing ever to happen to British politics since Oliver Cromwell. It convinced New Labour that the Civil Service was run by Establishment Tory partisans committed to frustrating Labour's plans. And they convinced the Conservative Party of the same thing, mutatis mutandis.
Hence SpAds running the show. Hence career civil servants being forced out. Though the programme was very funny.
The thing that amuses me is that people seem to be under a misapprehension that voter ID is about suppression, or is Johnson's idea, or is Cummings idea.
The fact is that this is the Electoral Commission's idea and the Electoral Commission have been in favour of this since 2014. In that time there's been three Prime Ministers, three General Elections - and years of trials and development. Trials of voter ID occurred two years ago, organised by the Electoral Commission which had been working on this for five years by that point, while Johnson was a backbencher.
Its sad for me that Voter ID may be needed. I also have ethical qualms on the government having our ID element. But its not about suppression that's just American nonsense, just like suggesting that our Police are like America's is nonsense.
Question: You stated that there is 0.0% chance of any voter being deterred by ID. I asked on what personal experience of campaigning you based this on. As there has been no attempt to answer, could I ask if the answer is 0.0 experience?
Worth pointing out that apparently you know better than the Electoral Commission. After their 2019 trial they found that "several important questions remain about how an ID requirement would work in practice, particularly at a national poll with higher levels of turnout" based upon "Nearly everyone in these pilots who went to their polling station to vote was able to show ID without difficulty, as in 2018. Out of all those who went to their polling station, the proportion who couldn’t show ID and who did not return to vote ranged from 0.03% to 0.7%.
Some groups of people may find it harder than others to show ID, particularly photo ID. This includes people with accessibility challenges as well as other less frequent voters who did not attempt to vote on 2 May but are more likely to do so at a UK general election."
Note their caution - how would this work in a general election with higher turnout? Local election trials highlighted many issues, specifically "These challenges [issuing local id / replacement poll cards] could also have a significant impact on those people who apply for replacement poll cards close to the deadline, and their ability to show ID on polling day."
Any way you cut it, the impact is not 0.0%. And the poorer the area the bigger the challenges. That used to be a Labour problem. Now its a Tory problem.
No you're misquoting me, I never said there is a 0.0% chance of any voter being deterred by ID. What I said is that I expect the impact on turnout would be 0.0%
Turnout in 2019 was 67.52% including spoilt ballots with 32,131,661 votes cast - so to impact turnout by 0.1% is 47,587 eligible voters and 0.0% is 23,793 or fewer.
After the 2019 trials did the Electoral Commission recommend proceeding with Voter ID or to stop it?
the proportion who couldn’t show ID and who did not return to vote ranged from 0.03% to 0.7% - now that may be in rounding error territory but it's not 0.
I didn't say 0, I said 0.0% impact on turnout.
0.03% at one significant figure is 0.0% of turnout.
Given that 0.03 to 0.7 will be a bell curve - it's not going to be 0.0%
Perhaps, or the 0.7 might be an outlier. More data needed.
But that's why I asked what impact overall we might be talking about. I would expect it to round to 0.0% which matches the 0.03 - others might suggest 0.1% or 0.3% or something else. What figure would you expect?
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
Not necessarily. Boris doesn't necessarily have to implement it but just to flag it, knowing that Labour then marches in and says "why are we having voter ID? It is racist, discriminatory etc" and BJ says "Why is Labour so against this? Because they benefit from fraud in inner-city seats."
There has been a whole industry built around the idea that BJ is an idiot and a buffoon, and so will be easy to conquer. Fair few have got it wrong so far.
As for voter ID I am torn. It is an important activity, perhaps the most important one, and it makes sense to ensure that people are who they say they are for this activity. But I loathe giving ID for anything. When I walk into a City building for a meeting and am asked for my ID or for them to take a photo I visibly scowl.
Of course it's much worse in Yurp where they ask for your passport and don't give it back until you are leaving the building. Bloody continentals.
For a vital civil function I think it's OK, though whether or not it makes practical sense is another matter. Although they've had it in Northern Ireland for years.
I agree, for stupid meetings which are probably pointless anyway, it's infuriating.
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
I'd have thought the biggest issue for fraud would occur on postal votes inside the household.
It's very easy for the dominant householder to open all the ballots, complete them, insist on signatures and send them off again.
That’s intimidation, not fraud.
Eh? You what? Someone's ballot being taken away and denied to them and then completed on false pretences?
Fraud. It's just that person is guilty of two offences.
Postal ballots have virtually no checks on them. A better way might be to make them available for completion in advance but only at post offices or at council sites by the voter.
If they can't travel (at all) to vote due to disability or other issue then that needs assuring.
A postal vote requires my signature (checked against a historic one) alongside other information - I have one as I always used to be away on election note (2017 I was in India so couldn't even visit this site to read the fun).
If anything my postal vote is more rigorously checked than any in person vote.
Your postal vote is not checked to ensure you have not sold it to anyone else, or been blackmailed or forced to cast it in a particular way, or that it is one of several dozen that have been filled in by a party activist.
Postal votes are far more open to fraud than in-person votes.
Except for the last one - how does that differ with an in-person vote.
If I give you £100 to vote for Boris Corbyn, and you have a postal vote, I can demand to see it before handing over the dosh. If you vote in person then you put an X on the paper and, without showing it to anyone, place it in the ballot box. You can lie to me in order to collect my £100 bribe and secretly vote for Sir Keir Rees-Mogg.
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
Here you go again "chunks". But I was wrong to write "vast".
How big of a "chunk" are you thinking about? What percentage of the electorate in your eyes will be put off voting because of this?
Take somewhere like Thornaby where I used to live. Take one of the sink estates that turned out in record numbers to vote Tory in 2019. These people do not vote - or didn't until Brexit woke them up. So finding excuses and reasons not to bother comes easy to them. All it takes are the tiny numbers who have no ID and cannot vote talking about it and the people who aren't sure will drift off the definitely going to vote list.
It doesn't take many people before those new Tory majorities start to dissolve. BAME communities were mentioned above, but so many of these vote by post anyway so aren't affected. It is the white working class who are in the firing line for this, and in these seats if they vote they're voting Tory.
Again, this is based on years of doorstep campaigning in these places with these voters. Your absolute certainty is based upon zero experience of these voters.
Craig Murray has been sentenced to eight months in prison for contempt of court over the Alex Salmond trial - he is told he has 48 hours to hand himself in, although Roddy Dunlop is attempting to lodge an immediate appeal without warrant being grante....
Lady Dorrian said Craig Murray's actions "strike at the heart of the fair administration of justice" and create a real risk that complainers will be reluctant to come forward in future cases, particularly high-profile ones
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
Here you go again "chunks". But I was wrong to write "vast".
How big of a "chunk" are you thinking about? What percentage of the electorate in your eyes will be put off voting because of this?
Take somewhere like Thornaby where I used to live. Take one of the sink estates that turned out in record numbers to vote Tory in 2019. These people do not vote - or didn't until Brexit woke them up. So finding excuses and reasons not to bother comes easy to them. All it takes are the tiny numbers who have no ID and cannot vote talking about it and the people who aren't sure will drift off the definitely going to vote list.
It doesn't take many people before those new Tory majorities start to dissolve. BAME communities were mentioned above, but so many of these vote by post anyway so aren't affected. It is the white working class who are in the firing line for this, and in these seats if they vote they're voting Tory.
Again, this is based on years of doorstep campaigning in these places with these voters. Your absolute certainty is based upon zero experience of these voters.
There are two separate issues here. As MrEd says, it could play well with the intended and very long tried-and-tested, transatlantic dog-whistle narrative of "See ? Labour is against this because they support minority fraud". Equally, though, and as you say, it may cost the Tories large numbers of their own votes. A case of importing active policy without thinking too thoroughly ahead.
Got to say so far this debate is making me lean against voter ID, as the photographic element does make me think this is just another bullshit route to ID cards.
On Scotland, Cameron's old tutor at Oxford Vernon Bogdanor suggests partitioning Scotland if it ever voted for independence and enabling some Unionist areas to stay in the UK
Why? If you believe in self determination - as Scot Nats must - why do they have an arbitrary historical line as the boundary. If a clear majority of the Borders want to stay in the UK why should they be ripped out against their will?
If a clear majority of Scots want to stay in the EU why should they be ripped out against their will? Etc
Well quite. I don't think that purported option was thought through.
I don't think the EU allows partial membership by country does it?
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
Here you go again "chunks". But I was wrong to write "vast".
How big of a "chunk" are you thinking about? What percentage of the electorate in your eyes will be put off voting because of this?
Take somewhere like Thornaby where I used to live. Take one of the sink estates that turned out in record numbers to vote Tory in 2019. These people do not vote - or didn't until Brexit woke them up. So finding excuses and reasons not to bother comes easy to them. All it takes are the tiny numbers who have no ID and cannot vote talking about it and the people who aren't sure will drift off the definitely going to vote list.
It doesn't take many people before those new Tory majorities start to dissolve. BAME communities were mentioned above, but so many of these vote by post anyway so aren't affected. It is the white working class who are in the firing line for this, and in these seats if they vote they're voting Tory.
Again, this is based on years of doorstep campaigning in these places with these voters. Your absolute certainty is based upon zero experience of these voters.
I wouldn't be surprised if this measure also morphs into looking at the postal voting system. As you said, many of the BAME community vote by post. Given they are not BJ's natural supporters, that is an obvious area for BJ to target and would especially help the Tories in Yorkshire, parts of Lancashire and the West Midlands.
As for voter ID I am torn. It is an important activity, perhaps the most important one, and it makes sense to ensure that people are who they say they are for this activity. But I loathe giving ID for anything. When I walk into a City building for a meeting and am asked for my ID or for them to take a photo I visibly scowl.
Of course it's much worse in Yurp where they ask for your passport and don't give it back until you are leaving the building. Bloody continentals.
For a vital civil function I think it's OK, though whether or not it makes practical sense is another matter. Although they've had it in Northern Ireland for years.
I agree, for stupid meetings which are probably pointless anyway, it's infuriating.
I am all over the place because although I am ambivalent about voter ID I am very much against vaccine passports but then as you say, and much as people might argue otherwise, going to the pub is not a vital civil function (although proving you are not breaking the law in one is) and hence for those functions it makes sense to have ID.
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
Here you go again "chunks". But I was wrong to write "vast".
How big of a "chunk" are you thinking about? What percentage of the electorate in your eyes will be put off voting because of this?
Take somewhere like Thornaby where I used to live. Take one of the sink estates that turned out in record numbers to vote Tory in 2019. These people do not vote - or didn't until Brexit woke them up. So finding excuses and reasons not to bother comes easy to them. All it takes are the tiny numbers who have no ID and cannot vote talking about it and the people who aren't sure will drift off the definitely going to vote list.
It doesn't take many people before those new Tory majorities start to dissolve. BAME communities were mentioned above, but so many of these vote by post anyway so aren't affected. It is the white working class who are in the firing line for this, and in these seats if they vote they're voting Tory.
Again, this is based on years of doorstep campaigning in these places with these voters. Your absolute certainty is based upon zero experience of these voters.
I have experience I'd just rather talk about the issue than my private life. Especially since I post in my name and not an anonymous moniker, something I regret doing when I signed up, I'd rather not give information that makes doxxing possible.
If you're convinced that significant numbers of people have no ID and won't get free ID and won't vote then what proportion of people do you think that is? Do you think its one in four voters that will be put off voting? One in ten? One percent? 0.5%? 0.1%?
You keep saying "many" or "chunks" but object to "vast" so what sort of apparently not vast "chunk" are you imagining here?
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
Not necessarily. Boris doesn't necessarily have to implement it but just to flag it, knowing that Labour then marches in and says "why are we having voter ID? It is racist, discriminatory etc" and BJ says "Why is Labour so against this? Because they benefit from fraud in inner-city seats."
There has been a whole industry built around the idea that BJ is an idiot and a buffoon, and so will be easy to conquer. Fair few have got it wrong so far.
He is a global expert at proving doubters wrong! But as this apparently is in the Queen's Speech it is a draft bill. Normally if he is virtue signalling it just gets announced - his Care Plan as an example. Bringing it to the Commons to have Labour / the Lords kill it? A new tactic...!
Hancock on R4 waffled around the social care question: "why aren't you delivering? Johnson said he had a plan etc"
Ended with rather a good speech about how in general "this government delivers" but we are still none the wiser as to when social care will have a plan.
Notable from the discussion was the way he tried to present the Johnson government as completely different from the Tory years before that. As if a new party had been elected frankly.
To be fair, I gather some people in the shires are beginning to think that!
I think this is right. They are a different party with a few old Tory hangers on, in the same way that at least until around 2006 New labour were a different party from Labour.
Step back and look at the current conservative policy suite, and it's a mixture of soft focus populism (let's face it we're not imprisoning dissidents or banning newspapers yet) and super-Keynesian crisis economics. It feels pretty different from what came before.
Exactly. The Conservatives haven't won places like Hartlepool. Johnson's Blue Labour has won them. The old Tories used to be run out of town.
The Tories also lost control of Tunbridge Wells and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire county councils last week and lost seats in Surrey, areas which contain parliamentary seats they won even in 1997 and 2001, mainly due to gains by the LDs.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
I don't know about Tunbridge Wells and Surry but I do know from friends in Oxfordshire who would normally be Tory that there is a lot of anger about fields being turned into ugly housing estates. Certainly around the Didcot / Abingdon areas, that seems to be the case.
And the LibDems are the NIMBY party. Look at their election literature......
That is an even harder line than Boris took on immigration, where was this Barnier in the Brexit talks?
One presumes he is talking about non-EU immigration, ie “Muslims”.
France’s culture war is much more septic than ours.
Across the EU there seems to be a different drawing of the "them" vs "us" boundary and identity, which may explain some of the mutual incomprehension we saw with Brexit. For the far-right on the continent "us" seems to include all white Christian Europeans (including Russians) and "them" starts at the Bosphorus and the straits of Gibraltar. For the Faragist right in Britain "us" extended, at a push, to somewhere near Vienna and "them" started East and South East of there. Since when the them/us frontier has retreated to the channel.
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
Here you go again "chunks". But I was wrong to write "vast".
How big of a "chunk" are you thinking about? What percentage of the electorate in your eyes will be put off voting because of this?
Take somewhere like Thornaby where I used to live. Take one of the sink estates that turned out in record numbers to vote Tory in 2019. These people do not vote - or didn't until Brexit woke them up. So finding excuses and reasons not to bother comes easy to them. All it takes are the tiny numbers who have no ID and cannot vote talking about it and the people who aren't sure will drift off the definitely going to vote list.
It doesn't take many people before those new Tory majorities start to dissolve. BAME communities were mentioned above, but so many of these vote by post anyway so aren't affected. It is the white working class who are in the firing line for this, and in these seats if they vote they're voting Tory.
Again, this is based on years of doorstep campaigning in these places with these voters. Your absolute certainty is based upon zero experience of these voters.
I wouldn't be surprised if this measure also morphs into looking at the postal voting system. As you said, many of the BAME community vote by post. Given they are not BJ's natural supporters, that is an obvious area for BJ to target and would especially help the Tories in Yorkshire, parts of Lancashire and the West Midlands.
When a lot of people talk about electoral fraud, they know and we know that they are talking about asian electoral fraud and postals is the modus operandi. So yes, a pivot away from turn up ID to postal ID would make more sense for Tory strategists.
for entry to Singapore; all visitors must be granted permission to enter Singapore by the Singapore government and if granted permission to enter, you will be issued Stay at Home Notice (SHN) for at least 21 days
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
Here you go again "chunks". But I was wrong to write "vast".
How big of a "chunk" are you thinking about? What percentage of the electorate in your eyes will be put off voting because of this?
Take somewhere like Thornaby where I used to live. Take one of the sink estates that turned out in record numbers to vote Tory in 2019. These people do not vote - or didn't until Brexit woke them up. So finding excuses and reasons not to bother comes easy to them. All it takes are the tiny numbers who have no ID and cannot vote talking about it and the people who aren't sure will drift off the definitely going to vote list.
It doesn't take many people before those new Tory majorities start to dissolve. BAME communities were mentioned above, but so many of these vote by post anyway so aren't affected. It is the white working class who are in the firing line for this, and in these seats if they vote they're voting Tory.
Again, this is based on years of doorstep campaigning in these places with these voters. Your absolute certainty is based upon zero experience of these voters.
I wouldn't be surprised if this measure also morphs into looking at the postal voting system. As you said, many of the BAME community vote by post. Given they are not BJ's natural supporters, that is an obvious area for BJ to target and would especially help the Tories in Yorkshire, parts of Lancashire and the West Midlands.
When a lot of people talk about electoral fraud, they know and we know that they are talking about asian electoral fraud and postals is the modus operandi. So yes, a pivot away from turn up ID to postal ID would make more sense for Tory strategists.
Absolutely, and again that would be from the most successful part of the American playbook.
About time. It’s amazing that these schemes - ubiquitous in Europe and increasingly in all Western metros - are almost absent from the U.K (save London).
That is an even harder line than Boris took on immigration, where was this Barnier in the Brexit talks?
One presumes he is talking about non-EU immigration, ie “Muslims”.
France’s culture war is much more septic than ours.
Across the EU there seems to be a different drawing of the "them" vs "us" boundary and identity, which may explain some of the mutual incomprehension we saw with Brexit. For the far-right on the continent "us" seems to include all white Christian Europeans (including Russians) and "them" starts at the Bosphorus and the straits of Gibraltar. For the Faragist right in Britain "us" extended, at a push, to somewhere near Vienna and "them" started East and South East of there. Since when the them/us frontier has retreated to the channel.
I think at the Channel from the beginning for many Faragists, to be fair.
It's about priorities isn't it, essentially. Boris and team deciding to introduce voter ID in the Queen's speech alongside various other partisan procedural legislation, some of which may have very reasonable foundations and arguments in its favour, because it's on-brand and appeals to the base.
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Tactically this is spot on for Blue Labour. Dog whistle gesture politics at its finest. It will harm them at the next election when it discourages chunks of their new electorate from voting, but Boris can only ever see 6 inches in front of him.
Not necessarily. Boris doesn't necessarily have to implement it but just to flag it, knowing that Labour then marches in and says "why are we having voter ID? It is racist, discriminatory etc" and BJ says "Why is Labour so against this? Because they benefit from fraud in inner-city seats."
There has been a whole industry built around the idea that BJ is an idiot and a buffoon, and so will be easy to conquer. Fair few have got it wrong so far.
The fact that BoJo has cultivated his image as a buffoon ought to have been a giveaway that he sees it as being in his interest to be viewed that way.
Interestingly, even smart people fall for a manifestation of it. Take the "at least Boris's lies are sincere" thing. Once you conclude that "Boris" is an act, there's no reason to think that anything he says or does has any grounding other than "what will advance me with this audience right now?"
After all, the Boris Johnson who is intending to introduce Voter ID is the same one who said he would "grind up his ID card in his Moulinex and sprinkle it over his cornflakes and eat it" in 2008. Before anyone points it out, you can distinguish between papers people have to carry at all times as bad and photo ID for voting as good. But only just. Much more straightforward to conclude that he tells liberals what they want to hear and authoritarians what they want to hear. Hence the current Conservative coalition.
Comments
Heterozygous twin embryos sometimes have one absorb the other so a person with two codes is born. I was immensely proud of myself when I figured out the answer to a House medical mystery before he did, regarding such a case.
But those imaginary possible options aren't being used today.
Might encourage multiple attempts to vote in some cases..
This is one of the troubles with sharing a language. We get their journalism and social media content and assume America is the world.
It's like a form of cosplay. Cowboys and Indians for our times. I don't actually think the conservatives are making a concerted effort at voter suppression, unlike their republican US counterparts. The UK is a very different country. But they are donning the fancy dress and playing the part because it feels like the right thing for their tribe to do, and their left wing opponents are channelling the outrage to levels worthy of the RSC, because that's what the Dems do.
https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/2021/05/10/stephen-tierney-the-scottish-parliamentary-elections-and-the-second-referendum-debate/
Not to say I'm in favour of voter ID, because elections and their franchise should be as open as possible and there should be as few barriers as possible to voting.
https://twitter.com/darrengrimes_/status/1391724357576282112?s=21
you best hope someone remembers to bring it with you.
The fact is that this is the Electoral Commission's idea and the Electoral Commission have been in favour of this since 2014. In that time there's been three Prime Ministers, three General Elections - and years of trials and development. Trials of voter ID occurred two years ago, organised by the Electoral Commission which had been working on this for five years by that point, while Johnson was a backbencher.
Its sad for me that Voter ID may be needed. I also have ethical qualms on the government having our ID element. But its not about suppression that's just American nonsense, just like suggesting that our Police are like America's is nonsense.
More people need to model themselves after Bernard, like me.
So the fact there are over 100+ genders means that you can look through the list of these and identify your brand. We seem the same with sexual preference where the LGBT I grew up with and can understand is now replaced with an alphabet of options.
We also see the same with race. I listened to an interesting programme yesterday on radio 4 about those who are black but have a mixed heritage called passing. I thought it was interesting and helped me but the thing I found difficult was that for those people who feel they can't talk about these issues now it was a negative, but also those who talk and use the wrong language are also described in a negative fashion. I prefer to see the world where people try to be generous and kind but might make mistakes.
The recent discussion around Prince Harry and Archie and his skin colour could be viewed from more than one angle. I know if I spoke to a friend and relative about the skin colour of their child it would not be in a derogatory way, just to make sure that they were starting to consider the issues around identity that it would bring up for the child.
The policy has been on the agenda since 2014 when the Electoral Commission advocated it (in response to mounting fraud cases that were occurring eg Tower Hamlets). That was pre-Dominic Cummings era.
The policy has been worked on for years including trials in 2019. That was pre-Dominic Cummings era.
So unless Dominic Cummings has a TARDIS how does the Electoral Commission advocating for and working on this since 2014 and trials in May 2019 correspond to Dominic Cummings?
You're acting like people who can see Jesus in their toast - you're seeing the image of Cummings everywhere even where he isn't.
https://twitter.com/markmcgeoghegan/status/1391874262483488771?s=21
Worth pointing out that apparently you know better than the Electoral Commission. After their 2019 trial they found that "several important questions remain about how an ID requirement would work in practice, particularly at a national poll with higher levels of turnout" based upon "Nearly everyone in these pilots who went to their polling station to vote was able to show ID without difficulty, as in 2018. Out of all those who went to their polling station, the proportion who couldn’t show ID and who did not return to vote ranged from 0.03% to 0.7%.
Some groups of people may find it harder than others to show ID, particularly photo ID. This includes people with accessibility challenges as well as other less frequent voters who did not attempt to vote on 2 May but are more likely to do so at a UK general election."
Note their caution - how would this work in a general election with higher turnout? Local election trials highlighted many issues, specifically "These challenges [issuing local id / replacement poll cards] could also have a significant impact on those people who apply for replacement poll cards close to the deadline, and their ability to show ID on polling day."
Any way you cut it, the impact is not 0.0%. And the poorer the area the bigger the challenges. That used to be a Labour problem. Now its a Tory problem.
Has anyone even suggested "vast"? Other than Philip?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2xS-AxKk0k
Turnout in 2019 was 67.52% including spoilt ballots with 32,131,661 votes cast - so to impact turnout by 0.1% is 47,587 eligible voters and 0.0% is 23,793 or fewer.
After the 2019 trials did the Electoral Commission recommend proceeding with Voter ID or to stop it?
87,214 Londoners had their mayoral votes rejected because they accidentally voted twice in the ‘first preference’ column. That’s basically the equivalent of a full Wembley Stadium or - to put it another way - 1 in 30 of all votes cast in the election.
https://twitter.com/RaphaelSheridan/status/1391348293150642176?s=20
Even in complicated elections eg Guernsey's ("First 38 past the post with 119 candidates") the rejected ballot rate was a lot lower - 1 in 160.
That's quite a chilling quote imo. And I caught snippets of the R4 prog when they were discussing Rachel Dolezal. I couldn't help thinking in my insulated white, middle class way, how it was extraordinary that people get so exercised about someone wanting to identify as something else. Why shouldn't they? Cultural appropriation is a crime now? Better cancel all those Madness features we are hearing on the radio right now.
It seems very strange. Is it "woke gone mad"? Not entirely sure but we are certainly in the midst of growing pains, culture-wise.
But the same applies. Say I'm a candidate, or someone nefarious that a candidate has 'employed' to try and cast fraudulent postal votes. I can find out the list of postal voters (but only from a declared agent - so already a hurdle) and I can find out when they will be posted.
So I call round at the houses and hope to fish them out of letterboxes, or recover them from the halls of HMOs. In the old days before signature cross-checking, that might have worked, provided that the recipient wasn't bothered about voting (unlikely if they've applied for a PV) or moved away. If the person wants to vote, they're likely to complain to the council when their vote doesnt arrive, and thereupon a note would be put to see if that vote was returned, immediately triggering a risk. Nowadays, with signature cross-checking, the likelihood that any votes I stole would pass the verification is small indeed. And the missing votes would again trigger complaints that would flag a problem - particularly if the missing voters were concentrated in one area.
Or I can try to bribe or threaten the postal voters in order to get them to complete them in front of me. How risky is that, and how likely, out of the blue, to succeed?
In the hypothetical of a father of a large family pressuring the others in his household to vote a certain way, he's going to pressure them to supply whatever ID is required, so that circumstance isn't pertinent to the proposal in any case.
Impact on turnout is driven by all kinds of reasons. The candidates are all shit. Its raining. My kids are playing up. I'm waiting for my partner to get home from work. Where is the polling station. I'll do it later. I'm too tired now. Etc. Etc. Etc.
I have no expectation that someone will answer the door on knocking-out and say "I'm not voting cos of voter ID". But it just drives the list of excuses that non-voters make for why they aren't going out to vote.
Finally, you ask if the EC recommended going ahead or stopping voter ID. The answer is neither. "However, we are not able to draw definitive conclusions, from these pilots, about how an ID requirement would work in practice, particularly at a national poll with higher levels of turnout or in areas with different socio-demographic profiles not fully represented in the pilot scheme.
If the policy is to be developed further, Government and Parliament should consider carefully the available evidence about the impact of different approaches on the accessibility and security of polling station voting in Great Britain."
"It seems that 21 out of the top 30 constituencies for no passports are Conservative held and that 10 of them are 2019 gains."
Same as Labour and Palestine. Nobody would argue there's not a long-running issue with Israel's policies on settlers and blockade of Gaza, especially this week, but Labour chose to prioritise this as an issue because it appealed to the base.
Political parties doing what political parties do. And I could say the same about my own party who have long devoted outsized attention and debate to legalising cannabis and introducing a land tax, two issues that never score that highly in lists of voter priorities (though the latter should).
Postal votes are far more open to fraud than in-person votes.
"The pilot scheme has shown that some ID options would be more complicated for Returning Officers and polling station staff to deliver.
The relative security benefits of these options would need to be considered alongside the impact on the administration of election procedures, particularly polling station processes."
The more of a ball-ache it is to run an election the longer it will take to validate and then count the votes, so if this does come in a shift to Friday counts will look ever more appealing. Will Returning Officers and councils be given additional resources to pay for all this? Course they won't! So the overtime bill will need to be cut and night counts cost more dollah than day counts.
The current Tory party is more working class than it has ever been and has made big gains from Labour in the North and Midlands but that has come at the cost of losing some upper middle class voters in the South to the LDs
https://twitter.com/caroline_roux/status/1392003190439227394?s=21
Of course it's much worse in Yurp where they ask for your passport and don't give it back until you are leaving the building. Bloody continentals.
How big of a "chunk" are you thinking about? What percentage of the electorate in your eyes will be put off voting because of this?
0.03% at one significant figure is 0.0% of turnout.
It also made me reflect on the different attitudes towards voting and elections. America seems to have this narrative of an incorruptible democracy, a great human experiment gilded in the divinity of Republic as a guiding beacon for all mankind. We had rotten boroughs and a creeping extension of the franchise. Open and expected electoral corruption was always a well known part of our political history but the deck has never seemed stacked in the same way as it was (and still can be) in America. I feel I'm grasping (or reaching!) at something here, to do with the stories we tell ourselves, but I'm unable to articulate the point. Voting feels more functional here than the narrative we get of American elections from American news media.
a) Voting as someone else who is genuinely on the register
b) Adding fictitious people onto the register and voting as them
a) As pointed out on a previous thread by myself a) is very ineffective, although I have come across it once. The reasons are you have to be aware that the real voter isn't turning up, which you can surmise by canvas returns, but is not certain, you have to be sure the real voter isn't recognizable to anyone in the polling station or around you and most importantly you can probably only do one vote as may be recognised if you keep turning up. So there is a very high chance of getting caught and your impact will be minimal (just a few votes).
b) This method can garner many more votes, but you still have the problem that you need a team of people to do as otherwise you will be recognised. You will need 20 people to get just 20 votes. You can spread it across lots of polling stations, but that means you have to set up lots of fictitious voters in different locations which isn't easy as you need real addresses. You need people in on the scam at these addresses or risk being picked up by the residents at these addresses who get polling cards with the wrong names on them. And of course unless you put 20 odd people on the address you again won't garner many votes and of course returning officers look out for large households.
Tightening up registration is the best way of improving b) although generally it isn't a problem, although has been done a few times. We know cos they get caught.
I am aware of a) once [because to do it to any effect is insane] and b) several times.
To do these to any effect (i.e. more than a handful of votes) you are almost certain to get caught.
France’s culture war is much more septic than ours.
Hence SpAds running the show. Hence career civil servants being forced out. Though the programme was very funny.
But that's why I asked what impact overall we might be talking about. I would expect it to round to 0.0% which matches the 0.03 - others might suggest 0.1% or 0.3% or something else. What figure would you expect?
There has been a whole industry built around the idea that BJ is an idiot and a buffoon, and so will be easy to conquer. Fair few have got it wrong so far.
I agree, for stupid meetings which are probably pointless anyway, it's infuriating.
If so, will it be available across all formats: at station, ticket machines, online. smart tickets, or will that element be phased?
It doesn't take many people before those new Tory majorities start to dissolve. BAME communities were mentioned above, but so many of these vote by post anyway so aren't affected. It is the white working class who are in the firing line for this, and in these seats if they vote they're voting Tory.
Again, this is based on years of doorstep campaigning in these places with these voters. Your absolute certainty is based upon zero experience of these voters.
Lady Dorrian said Craig Murray's actions "strike at the heart of the fair administration of justice" and create a real risk that complainers will be reluctant to come forward in future cases, particularly high-profile ones
https://twitter.com/BBCPhilipSim/status/1392042862217515009?s=20
The SPD are on 15%, the FDP on 12%, the Afd on 11% and Linke on 7.5%
https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/insa.htm
https://twitter.com/paulhutcheon/status/1392044400407109635?s=20
https://twitter.com/severincarrell/status/1392042258497785856?s=20
If you're convinced that significant numbers of people have no ID and won't get free ID and won't vote then what proportion of people do you think that is? Do you think its one in four voters that will be put off voting? One in ten? One percent? 0.5%? 0.1%?
You keep saying "many" or "chunks" but object to "vast" so what sort of apparently not vast "chunk" are you imagining here?
for entry to Singapore; all visitors must be granted permission to enter Singapore by the Singapore government and if granted permission to enter, you will be issued Stay at Home Notice (SHN) for at least 21 days
https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/singapore/entry-requirements
If Freedom of movement becomes a problem, then it becomes an ideal that is "temporarily" broken.
About time.
It’s amazing that these schemes - ubiquitous in Europe and increasingly in all Western metros - are almost absent from the U.K (save London).
Interestingly, even smart people fall for a manifestation of it. Take the "at least Boris's lies are sincere" thing. Once you conclude that "Boris" is an act, there's no reason to think that anything he says or does has any grounding other than "what will advance me with this audience right now?"
After all, the Boris Johnson who is intending to introduce Voter ID is the same one who said he would "grind up his ID card in his Moulinex and sprinkle it over his cornflakes and eat it" in 2008. Before anyone points it out, you can distinguish between papers people have to carry at all times as bad and photo ID for voting as good. But only just. Much more straightforward to conclude that he tells liberals what they want to hear and authoritarians what they want to hear. Hence the current Conservative coalition.