Our next elections are town and parish council elections on May 4th this year – the first time that the new elections law will require voters to produce photo identification.
There’s a lot wrong with our voting system but electoral fraud isn’t one of those things.
Apparently, there were 33 investigations of voter fraud at the last general election (where 58 million people voted) which resulted in 6 prosecutions. Introducing Voter ID will cost anywhere up to £180million over ten years with each polling card costing 11p more to produce, not to mention all the other extra costs. At best this is a massive sledgehammer to crack a non-existent nut, at worst just a way of making it harder for the disadvantaged to vote.
Your photo ID could be your driving licence, passport, senior bus pass – NOW card, or your disabled blue badge. It can even be out-of-date as long as the photo still looks like you. But an estimated 4% of the population, over 200,00 people, either don’t have any of these, or don’t still look like their photo.
If you’re in that 4%, you can apply for Voter Authority Certificate either online or on paper. 4 pages to fill in, photo needed and the form must be received by your local Electoral Registration Office by 5pm, 6 working days before the election you wish to vote in. What a palaver, when voting used to be so easy! It will doubtless put off many people.
Of course you could just circumvent the system by applying for a postal vote – apparently voter fraud doesn’t take place by post.
The Green Party believes it is vital that democracy is served by people exercising their right to vote. This should not be made more difficult than it needs to be. We will try and help anyone who does not have any photo ID and we will be constantly reminding those that do have it, to remember to take it to the polling station. This is a practice run for a longed-for General Election, let’s show the Government that we do care about democracy and turn out in numbers to vote.
More info at https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/i-am-a/voter/voter-id?gclsrc=aw.ds
Cllr. Jill Perry
Published in the Whitehaven News 2.2.23
