Parties split over need for voter ID
ON TV, radio, billboards and online, adverts have been popping up across the North in recent days about the controversial plans to force voters to show identification at polling stations.
The £5.6m public awareness campaign is ahead of mandatory photo ID being introduced at May’s local elections, a move some fear could disenfranchise voters, while there is little evidence of electoral fraud at polling stations.
Anyone who does not have appropriate identification will be able to apply for a free document, but there are concerns more marginalised communities will face fresh challenges to vote.
Top of the government’s list of accepted forms of photo ID are passports, something which could be a problem for the 59,809 people in Hull who don’t have one according to the latest government data.
Similarly, 22% of people in Blackpool and Hartlepool don’t have a passport, data journalist David Dubas-Fisher reports for the Northern Agenda.
There are a number of places in our region where more than a fifth of the population don’t have a passport. But those without a form of photo ID needn’t despair.
People can apply for a free Voter Authority Certificate. Applications can be made via the Gov.uk website and those who don’t wish to do this can still register to vote by post, where no form of photo ID is required.
In an interview with BBC Radio Norfolk, Conservative MP and former cabinet minister Brandon Lewis, said: “I think the government was right to say that people having a bit of ID, the same as you’d have [...] to go to a post office and collect a parcel or take a book out from the library is not unreasonable, to just give that extra bit of protection to our democratic process.”
Tempers flared this week in Bradford during a debate over the new rules, as the ruling Labour group put forward a motion calling for the Government to scrap plans for the policy to be implemented before May, as Local Democracy Reporter Chris Young writes.
Labour’s Kamran Hussain said the measure was “an attack on voter rights.” He claimed it was an effort by a Conservative Government to disenfranchise voters they know would be unlikely to support their party.
But Rebecca Poulsen, leader of the council’s Conservative group, pointed out that people need ID to buy alcohol, so needing it to vote wasn’t such a radical idea, and said Bradford had been “badly effected” by voter fraud in the past.
Earlier this month, the Electoral Commission, which oversees elections, launched its campaign urging voters to prepare for the changes, with adverts on TV, radio, billboards and online.
The televised advert says people must take ID to ballot boxes in the future, and those without can apply for a free certificate to vote.