Voter fraud is not the problem

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discovolante
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Re: Voter fraud is not the problem

Post by discovolante » Wed May 26, 2021 11:40 am

Woodchopper wrote:
Wed May 26, 2021 10:11 am
discovolante wrote:
Wed May 26, 2021 9:52 am
Fishnut wrote:
Wed May 26, 2021 9:40 am
The petition to get the government to scrap the Voter ID requirements got a response. Unsurprisingly the response was "no". It's almost impressive how firm they are, given how waffly they are most of the time in these responses. They say that "98% of voters already own a photographic document that is on the list of acceptable types of identification under this policy" and link to this briefing paper as evidence. I've not read through it yet but wanted to make a note of it so I remember to return to it and to give others a chance to take a look.
So they mean 98% of people already on the electoral roll? Rather than 98% of people who are eligible to vote including those who aren't on the roll? If that's what they mean then it shows how much they care about enfranchisement.
The number is from here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... at-britain

Its of all eligible voters, but:
Ninety-eight per cent held some form of photo ID (including ID that had expired or where the photo was no longer recognisable (Figure 2.1). Slightly fewer (96%) held a form of photo ID with a photo that respondents thought was recognisable (including ID that had expired), while nine in ten (91%) held a form of photo IDthat was both in-date and recognisable.

[...]

a substantial proportion (42%) of respondents with no photo ID said that they were unlikely or very unlikely to apply. This would suggest that close to half of those withoutphoto ID would not seek to apply for the Voter Card, and therefore be at risk of ending upwithout photo ID.

[...]

For the majority of respondents (89%), the requirement to present photo ID would make no difference to their likelihood to vote. This was more likely among those who had voted before (89%) than those who either had not voted beforeor did not know if they had voted before(85%).

Five per cent of respondents said the policy would make them less likely to vote, and the same proportion said it would make them more likely to vote. While equal proportions of those who had and had not voted before believed the policy would make them less likely to vote (5% each), a greater proportion of those who had not voted before said the policy would make them more likely to vote (8%, compared with 5% of those who had voted previously).

More than a quarter (27%) of those withno photo ID, and just under a fifth (19%) of those with only unrecognisable photo ID said that they would be less likely to vote if they needed to present photo ID, compared with four per cent of those holding recognisable photo ID.
Ooh thanks. Sorry, that'll teach me not to check stuff.
To defy the laws of tradition is a crusade only of the brave.

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Martin Y
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Re: Voter fraud is not the problem

Post by Martin Y » Wed May 26, 2021 12:14 pm

So about one in ten voters doesn't have suitable photo ID (i.e. recognisable and in-date) and about one in ten reckon having to produce ID will make them less likely to vote. Add a proportion for those who forget to bring their ID on polling day and then either can't find it or can't be arsed to make a second trip out after they get home that evening and you've got a recipe for putting off perhaps millions of valid voters with your sledgehammer to crack the nut of literally a handful of invalid votes.

But better a million of your fellow citizens don't vote than one... well, I'm not sure what it is they're up to but a bloke down the pub reckons it's immigrants doing it whatever it is so Something Must Be Done.

bagpuss
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Re: Voter fraud is not the problem

Post by bagpuss » Wed May 26, 2021 12:58 pm

Martin Y wrote:
Wed May 26, 2021 12:14 pm
So about one in ten voters doesn't have suitable photo ID (i.e. recognisable and in-date) and about one in ten reckon having to produce ID will make them less likely to vote. Add a proportion for those who forget to bring their ID on polling day and then either can't find it or can't be arsed to make a second trip out after they get home that evening and you've got a recipe for putting off perhaps millions of valid voters with your sledgehammer to crack the nut of literally a handful of invalid votes.

But better a million of your fellow citizens don't vote than one... well, I'm not sure what it is they're up to but a bloke down the pub reckons it's immigrants doing it whatever it is so Something Must Be Done.
Exactly this.

You've also got all the problems which are inevitably going to happen when people get rightfully angry at being told that they can't vote because their id apparently doesn't look enough like them*, even though it is them. And the additional time it's inevitably going to take to get people through to vote, thus either requiring more workers in the polling stations and making it cost more to run an election or increasing the length of queues at busy times and probably putting more people off.

There are so very very many negative consequences of this policy that are so utterly obvious and easy to predict that if the government is going to proceed anyway it can only be for ideological reasons, not from any genuine desire to address a genuine** problem.


*Because if you're going to stop fraud then you have to be very careful about ensuring that the id isn't fraudulent, so you're going to have to err on the side of refusing questionable id.
**That would be because it isn't a genuine problem, I know.

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Trinucleus
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Re: Voter fraud is not the problem

Post by Trinucleus » Wed May 26, 2021 2:53 pm

The figures come from a telephone survey, so that's representative of everyone then. We all answer unrecognised numbers, have time for a survey.... have a listed phone number.....

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Fishnut
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Re: Voter fraud is not the problem

Post by Fishnut » Sun Jul 18, 2021 4:18 pm

So, you remember that petition for the government to scrap ID requirements where the government said it was all ok because 98% of people had ID (if you don't, I posted a link to it back here). Well, there's been a new petition asking the government to require ID checks for social media accounts*. The government has responded by arguing they can't implement such a requirement because,
Research from the Electoral Commission suggests that there are 3.5 million people in the UK who do not currently have access to a valid photo ID.
The Electoral Reform Society have a brief write-up of the blatant hypocrisy.

* FWIW I think this is a very dangerous idea that does nothing to tackle the actual problems of harassment and abuse on social media.
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Woodchopper
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Re: Voter fraud is not the problem

Post by Woodchopper » Mon Jul 19, 2021 11:04 am

The derail on ID registration and social media now has its own thread: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2634&p=89162#p89111

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