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Post by politician2 on May 16, 2023 11:20:49 GMT
Jacob Rees Mogg has now admitted it was an attempt at gerrymandering by the Govt Jacob Rees-Mogg is wrong. The Guardian article you quoted in your last post made clear that the requirement for photo ID simply wouldn't work as a voter suppression tactic. Specifically, it notes that two million people in the UK lacked the photo ID necessary to vote – that's 3% of the population. Potentially stopping 3% of the population from voting isn't likely to swing an election, even if that 3% specifically comprised people likely to vote a particular way (which it didn't – research has demonstrated that it was very young voters, who tend not to vote Conservative, and very old voters, who strongly tend to vote Conservative, who were most affected). |
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Post by Lord Emsworth on May 16, 2023 12:07:40 GMT
Jacob Rees Mogg has now admitted it was an attempt at gerrymandering by the Govt Jacob Rees-Mogg is wrong. The Guardian article you quoted in your last post made clear that the requirement for photo ID simply wouldn't work as a voter suppression tactic. Specifically, it notes that two million people in the UK lacked the photo ID necessary to vote – that's 3% of the population. Potentially stopping 3% of the population from voting isn't likely to swing an election, even if that 3% specifically comprised people likely to vote a particular way (which it didn't – research has demonstrated that it was very young voters, who tend not to vote Conservative, and very old voters, who strongly tend to vote Conservative, who were most affected). Whether he's right or wrong he has admitted the intention was to undermine democracy and nothing to do with fraud as you claimed, and which the non partisan Electoral Commission states barely exists Glad it came back to bite them on the bum Poetic justice Also 3% may not be a lot nationally but given elections are won or lost on key marginals given our crap system it could be highly significant, which is why it was introduced
Voter ID is ‘gerrymandering’ which backfired on Tories, says Rees-MoggElderly Tory voters didn’t have ID for local elections, says ex-cabinet minister The Conservative government’s introduction of voter ID was an attempt at “gerrymandering” that backfired against the party, senior Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg has said.
The former cabinet minister said the policy – which saw voters required to have photo ID when voting at England’s local elections – had made it harder for elderly Tories to vote and “upset a system that worked perfectly well”.
Speaking at the National Conservatism conference on Monday, Mr Rees-Mogg said: “Parties that try and gerrymander end up finding their clever scheme comes back to bite them – as dare I say we found by insisting on voter ID for elections.”www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rees-mogg-voter-id-tories-b2339068.html |
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Post by politician2 on May 16, 2023 12:39:58 GMT
Also 3% may not be a lot nationally but given elections are won or lost on key marginals given our crap system it could be highly significant, which is why it was introduced Probably not, to be honest. The last election where the winning party had a margin of less than 3% of the vote (which, of course, is not quite the same figure as 3% of the population) was 2005. The time before was February 1974. |
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Post by doug61 on May 16, 2023 13:54:39 GMT
Jacob Rees Mogg has now admitted it was an attempt at gerrymandering by the Govt Jacob Rees-Mogg is wrong. The Guardian article you quoted in your last post made clear that the requirement for photo ID simply wouldn't work as a voter suppression tactic. Specifically, it notes that two million people in the UK lacked the photo ID necessary to vote – that's 3% of the population. Potentially stopping 3% of the population from voting isn't likely to swing an election, even if that 3% specifically comprised people likely to vote a particular way (which it didn't – research has demonstrated that it was very young voters, who tend not to vote Conservative, and very old voters, who strongly tend to vote Conservative, who were most affected). Whether it had the effect of helping the Tories, it was thought by them that it would which is why it was implemented. Labour would do a similar thing by extending the vote to 16 year olds as they are more likely to vote Labour. Neither party care about the good and bad elements of these policy it's just about what it does at the ballot box for their numbers. With voter ID, no change to the electoral system should ever be implemented that limits participation unless it is in reply to a statistically proven problem with the system. The fraud in those numbers simply does not exist, therefore the only reason to change it was for one party to gain an advantage from it. It may have helped, it may have hindered, what is not in doubt is that it was put in place to give an edge to the Conservative party and that was a wrong thing to do as Rees-Mogg points out. |
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Post by politician2 on May 16, 2023 20:04:02 GMT
I'm still not convinced, as potentially suppressing a maximum of 3% of the electorate (including significant numbers of one's own supporters) isn't a viable strategy to rig elections. Of course, it's possible that the current government are dim enough to think it is, but I honestly don't believe that even they could be that stupid.
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Post by Lord Emsworth on May 17, 2023 5:54:04 GMT
I don't believe in the conspiracy theory that it's some kind of attempt to rig elections – it's the closing of a loophole that was bound to happen at some point. I'm a great believer that one should never ascribe to malice that which can be ascribed to incompetence. Voter ID was an attempt at gerrymandering |
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Post by doug61 on May 17, 2023 12:36:33 GMT
I'm still not convinced, as potentially suppressing a maximum of 3% of the electorate (including significant numbers of one's own supporters) isn't a viable strategy to rig elections. Of course, it's possible that the current government are dim enough to think it is, but I honestly don't believe that even they could be that stupid. Of course a thing like that won't be enough to win an election against a background of nearly universal contempt for the current government, no one is saying it would, but it helps the Conservative vote, or at least was thought to, that's why it was done, same with boundary changes and the same with a Labour Government were they to bring in voting for 16-18 year olds, they are all done to benefit the party who makes the changes, they would hardly do it if they thought it would help the opposition, now that WOULD be stupid. |
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Post by politician2 on May 17, 2023 12:56:14 GMT
My point is that as a strategy to rig elections, suppressing up to 3% of voters (many of them being in the category most likely to vote Conservative) simply wouldn't and couldn't work. That leads to one of two conclusions: either it wasn't a voter suppression strategy, in which case Jacob Rees-Mogg is wrong, or the government is so incompetent that it followed an obviously untenable and counterproductive vote-rigging strategy. Whilst I can't rule out the latter given the litany of other mistakes they made, my view leans towards the former.
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Post by Lord Emsworth on May 17, 2023 14:51:41 GMT
Of course it was an attempt at gerrymadering
You tie yourself up in knots trying to justify/understand what is, and has always, been transparently obvious
And now Rees Mogg has admitted it - case closed
Your list of reasons why it's not gerrymandering get ever more bizarre
In marginals a few hundred votes could easily be decisive
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Post by politician2 on May 17, 2023 16:20:26 GMT
I repeat: as a voter suppression strategy, insisting on photo ID isn’t going to work in the UK, as almost everybody has the ID they need. (It might well work in the USA, however.) It isn’t even advantageous to the Tories, as one of the key groups affected (the very elderly) tends both to vote and to vote Conservative. What would be the logic of pursuing a voter suppression strategy that is so fundamentally flawed?
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Post by Lord Emsworth on May 17, 2023 16:34:40 GMT
...almost everybody has the ID they need Wrong An estimated 3.4 million people do not possess acceptable photo ID (passports, driving licences, older or disabled person's bus passes or Oyster 60+ cards in London are accepted) There are far fewer forms of ID available to young people |
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Post by politician2 on May 17, 2023 16:44:17 GMT
Whose estimate? The article you cited from The Guardian quoted a figure of 2 million rather than 3.4 million. That’s a pretty significant difference.
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Post by Lord Emsworth on May 17, 2023 16:49:49 GMT
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Post by Lord Emsworth on May 18, 2023 6:59:42 GMT
What would be the logic of pursuing a voter suppression strategy that is so fundamentally flawed? The logic went like this Make sure the allowable ID was something plenty of older people already had but far fewer young people owned Reinforced by not allowing ID that young people tend to own e.g. Student ID, Over 18 photo cards, Young Person Railcard By contrast passports, driving licences, older or disabled person's bus passes or Oyster 60+ cards in London are all accepted Unbelievable that this was not obvious to your from the off It was all there in plain sight |
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Post by politician2 on May 18, 2023 10:48:45 GMT
Make sure the allowable ID was something plenty of older people already had but far fewer young people owned Except that's not what happened. There were two groups who were more likely to lack the ID to vote: young people (who tend not to vote Tory but also not to vote) and very old people (who tend to vote Tory and tend to vote). That makes the strategy untenable. As for whether 2+ million or 3.4 million people lacked the necessary ID, we have two quite different figures from two different sources. Both are left-leaning, so we can't accuse either of being more or less likely to massage the figure, and we have no way of definitively confirming which is correct. |
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