For years i didn’t have ‘proper’ I.D like a passport or driving licence because i couldn’t afford them. If told i needed them to vote i’d be much more likely to not vote than to take the financial hit. Shouldn’t we be doing whatever we can to encourage people on low incomes to vote…or is that the point?
Do we know how rife voter fraud actually is, and what percentage is commited in person at polling stations? Marckee…
This thread’s a bit too boring for CHRISTMAS, eh?
Bingo.
The idea of registering to vote is silly
i thought we already did need ID to vote - is this just a Northern Ireland thing?
always seemed pretty normal to me and seemed to make sense, but then reading about how attempts to enforce ID to vote in parts of the US heavily affects the black community then i realise it’s all quite cynical, seeing as poorer Americans are highly unlikely to own a passport so if they don’t drive, what ID will they have? (don’t know if this is so much of a thing over here though. when i worked for a bank it used to absolutely baffle me when someone said they didn’t have either a passport or driving licence, didn’t happen very often).
Yeah, people in my family used to vote more than once in the 60s.
Yep, came here to post roughly this.
‘vote early, vote often.’
Surely the easiest thing would be to make it compulsory to bring the poll card along and surrender it at the polling station. That way there’s no problem for people who don’t have photo Id and more than one person can’t vote under the same name.
Sorry, I don’t see how this addresses the “poor people being allowed to vote” problem?
Ha, silly me.
That said, I suspect there’s also a fair proportion of elderly Tory voters who don’t have photo I’d, either (although of course they could afford to get it I suppose).
Photo I’d
Labour meekly going along with this 
As I said elsewhere it’s doubly dubious as they are the party of the coalition who stopped ID cards. Makes it clear this is about disenfranchisement not fraud.
Just dye peoples finger like they do in some countries then it’ll be tories less likely to vote because theyre massive prissy fanies and wont want stained fingers.
They should get the people who do the census to go door-to-door collecting votes at the same time.
You should have to vote via dying your finger. Maybe all those shy Tories would stay shy if they had blue fingers after
seeing as it’s perfectly possible (and surprisingly common) to live in this country without any form of photo ID, it seems that to require it to vote is introducing a significant barrier. Definitely feels like a slippery slope and if the genuine reason is to try to avoid a small (at the most) amount of fraud, then maybe there are less intrusive ways?
A load of bullshit that belongs in the Descent Into Fascism thread.
Roughly so, cos this is just for polling station voting, right?
What’s wrong with the current thing of just giving your name and address and getting it ticked off and if anyone uses the same name and address later in the day then the alarm bells ring?
And, anyway, as I understand it, the main problem that needs addressing is postal votes. To my mind, of anything needs tightening up, they’re the votes that need to be looked into. So many ways to indulge in a little light fraud via that method (and often unbeknownst to the voter - it’s those helpful local councillors in care homes, etc, that need reining in).
But this is clearly just thinly veiled disenfranchisement rather than any genuine concern about fraud, so…
Fuck. We’re back to the worst hours of Blair’s civillibertysmash waaay sooner than I expected.
Roughly?
*Doubly
Meh I don’t see the issue with this. You need an ID to buy alcohol, rent a house, claim the dole, get a bank account etc. I can’t think of a group of people that will be affected.