Electoral protest

[igenlode]

I duly registered my protest at the local elections by turning up at the polling station as usual, getting myself identified and ticked off on the list of voters, and then refusing to produce the 'photo ID' that I don't have (and have refused to re-apply for in order to be graciously re-enfranchised after being gratuitously barred from voting as a non-person), thuis forcing the staff to very publically deny me the right to vote in front of a queue of other nice middle-class respectable people seeking to do their civic duty... I asked them to record the fact that I had attempted to participate in the election and had been turned away, but I don't know whether it will get reported back or not. What I should have done, of course, was to contact the local paper and bring a reporter and photographer in tow....

Probably a waste of time to do this at a local election since I shan't have the nerve to repeat the effort in front of the same people at the general election and shall simply be one of the hundreds of thousands who stay at home in the knowledge that they are pre-barred.

Comments

[watervole]

Personally, I'd get one, just to be able to vote against the party that introduced this legislation - I'm certain it was deliberately aimed at dis-enfranchising those on lower incomes who do not drive or go overseas.

[igenlode]

I'll do the Conservative party the justice to suppose that the disenfranchisement of the politically undesirable was probably a happy side-effect, rather than the intended plan -- I think it was simply a cynical attempt to win votes by stoking fear and appealing to existing social division, along the lines of deportations to Rwanda and legislating to clamp down on 'killer cyclists'. (The number of cases of voter personation at polling stations in Britain is approximately equal to the number of people who get killed by being run down by a bicycle, as in that both are in single figures annually...)

[watervole]

When the Lords voted to expand eligible ID to include bank statements, bills, library cards, student ID and others, the government struck that out. Cutting out Student IDs seems very cynical to me....