Voter identification: a warning
- highbrandon202
- Mar 1, 2021
- 1 min read
The government intends to pass a law which will make it compulsory to carry a passport or driver's licence in order to take part in UK elections. The crime of voter 'personation' , which this law is meant to counter, is almost non-existent in the UK.
This has to be seen in the context of other forms of voter suppression which have become disturbingly apparent in the United Kingdom over the past decade. The Coalition government made it more difficult for voters to register ; this government intends to go further by redrawing constituency boundaries (on the basis of inaccurate registers, because so many potential voters are not on the register). It also intends to reduce oversight of elections even further by abolishing the (ineffective) Electoral Commission. The abuses of electoral law by the Vote Leave campaign and the proroguing of Parliament in 2019 were not isolated incidents: they were part of a pattern of contempt for the norms of pluralist democracies. Another norm (transparency in awarding government contracts) has been violated repeatedly during the pandemic.
There is one solution, write to your MPs and demand that they vote against the proposed legislation.
In a similar vein, Priti Patel's introduction of the Declaration to Travel is another authoritarian measure. iI is completely unnecessary and the antithesis of 'global Britain'. It would appear to be born out of the trend you point to, of a government over-stretching its power and riding rough shod over basic human freedoms.