We still don’t have the full picture of how many people were stripped of their right to vote in May’s local elections in England.
We’ve long warned that this unnecessary policy would be a messy and expensive distraction – posing a real risk that genuine voters would lose their democratic right to vote.
This week, two pieces of evidence have emerged that back up our fear. Firstly, some Councils have slowly started publishing some numbers, and they make for shocking reading.
But these figures only give a partial picture. They don’t include those who turned back outside, or were reminded about the new rules as they queued and they don’t capture anyone who had heard about the scheme and decided it simply wasn’t worth heading down to the polling station as they knew they lacked the ID the government was demanding.
We’ve long said that people pretending to be each other at polling stations is not a major issue in the UK, where our elections are generally well-run. In 2019, the last year with a full general election, there was one conviction and one caution for impersonation nationally.
Secondly, in a startling admission, Jacob Rees-Mogg – who until recently was a government minister defending this policy – shared his views on what he thought Voter ID was meant to achieve versus his concerns at what actually happened. Click to watch what he had to say below.