Exactly as everybody warned.
this was always the plan, since minorities and disabled citizens in the UK tend not to vote conservative.
Meanwhile Labour plan to give people with Settled Status the vote, who they probably expect to vote for them. This cherry picking of the electorate isn’t going to benefit anyone.
Why shouldn’t they be able to vote?
They live here. They work here. They pay taxes. They’re allowed to stay indefinitely. They’ve made this country their home.
Because we’re browner
The EU ones (does Settled Status even apply to anyone else?) aren’t even that.
If you spent any second around tories you’d quickly learn that English white is the best white they just don’t say it out loud
What I noticed around the referendum was that a lot of Brits seem to think Romanians are all gypsies, confusing them with the Romani.
If they’d bothered to speak to any Romanians, they’d have discovered they have quite a bit in common, as the Romanians seem to hate the Romani even more than we do…
Yes, disenfranchising people is exactly the same as enfranchising people, your big centrist brain has it all figured out
Well, no. By changing the voter base you’re just avoiding actual productive competition. Why should a party bother doing actual work for its voters to earn their votes , when they can just parachute in a ton of people that will vote for them no matter what?
Oh no, my democracy is going to represent the people rather than an arbitrary subset of the people that happen to align with my biases! The horror!
Democracies should have strong, broad participation. Why would you want a democracy that hears the voice of fewer of its constituents, other than to do things they would never accept given the choice?
You think any change to the voter base is negative for some reason - it’s not. Some changes make the democracy less representative of the people living in it (e.g., arbitrarily deciding some people shouldn’t be able to vote) while some make the democracy more representative (e.g., removing arbitrary barriers to voting).
Oh no, my democracy is going to represent the people rather than an arbitrary subset of the people
Fair point
It just surprised me a bit that Labour have come up with this now, after Brexit, so I’m trying to read between the lines and see what motives they might have to do it. As much as I support Labour and broadening the voter base, I fear the ulterior motive here is to defend themselves from competition. If they actually wanted productive, democratic competition, they would adopt PR.
happen to align with my biases!
Please don’t assume my biases. It’s not a good look.
Brexit supporters claimed brexit would open the nation to more wide skilled immigration rather then be a racist attempt to stop it.
So of course that wanted immigration will lead to a community that needs a say in how the nation is run.
Yeah that was the plan
… and will call for changes, including the acceptance of a greater range of ID documents.
They’re just a bunch of fucking dullards aren’t they?!?! REPEAL IT!
The UK has driver’s license so why not voter ID?
Because depriving requires a qualification, voting dose not,
Voting requires you to be legally allowed to vote. This just makes it easier to verify who can and cannot vote.
Yet all the evidence indicates 2 things.
One it is not needed. As voter fraud is so low as to be insignificant.
Two it actually limits peoples ability to vote.
Where I live we get medical services cards with photos on them, free and no qualification needed, everyone eligible to vote should have or be able to get one
We don’t. The new law requires local auth to issue photo ID. But dose not provide a standard way for people to confirm they are the person photographed.
In genral its a mess. And leave the people least able to spare 9-5 time to run back and forth to council offices etc screwed.
IE the poor who work long hours. Or disabled
The authors found that “polling clerks are more likely to fail to compare a photo ID to the person presenting that document if the person is of a different ethnicity”.
They also highlighted the case of Andrea Barratt, who is immunocompromised and was blocked from entering a polling booth after refusing to remove her mask for an identification check.
WTF am I even reading? The problem is that some clerks are too stupid to identify non-white persons? And that someone else refused to take off the mask for 2 seconds to show her face!!?
At least it’s not the usual racist bullshit from the US where non-white people are allegedly too stupid and/or poor to get an ID…
more likely to fail to compare a photo ID to the person presenting that document if the person is of a different ethnicity
Wait, are they saying if someone is a different ethnicity they are more likely to not check if the ID matches?
That’s how it reads to me but I don’t think it’s the intention?
I think it means they’re less likely to be able to identify that the ID photo is the same person as the one standing in front of them. It’s the other-race effect, which I understand is quite natural for people of all races that have less experience with other races.
Yeah, that’s what I assumed it was supposed to mean, but it really doesn’t read that way to me.
And less votes for their guy, which is the actual problem. Saying minorities can’t get an ID is pure racism. But it’s fine when they do it.
But surely you can’t just let people vote without identifying them?
I mean, for a start it’s a solution without a problem. We don’t really have an issue with voter fraud in the UK. All this has done is disenfranchise people who could previously vote without needing an often costly ID.
It costs time and effort, something that disabled people often have less of.
Voter fraud is extremely low in the UK, and most of what does occur isn’t stopped by these changes (the most common type is, for example, parents submitting a postal vote on behalf of their (18+) children without asking them), So here’s a question for you:
If the number of people disuaded from voting due to the new ID laws significantly outnumber* the amount of fraud that’s prevented by this law, was the law a positive change?
*To the point that it has a larger effect on election outcome
We’ve had voter I.D. here in Northern Ireland for ages and I haven’t heard any complaints
You give your name & address at your local polling place, and it is checked off by a polling officer against the Electoral Roll. So yes, you could pretend to be someone else, but they would need to have not already voted. And you could only do it once per polling station, because you’ll be recognised by the polling officers. And for what?
