Voter suppression is legalised cheating – and it’s coming our way

Martin Shipton

Until now, the UK has been largely free of the pernicious phenomenon of voter suppression, but that’s in the process of changing.

Next Thursday the first elections will take place at which voters will be expected to produce a proof of their identity before being handed a ballot paper at the polling station.

Previously election officials trusted those presenting themselves to vote as being who they said they were.

The rule being enforced at council elections in England will not apply at local authority elections in Wales when they next take place in 2027. Nor will it be in use at the Senedd election due to take place the previous year. That’s because such elections come under the jurisdiction of the Welsh Government.

The rule will, however, be enforced in Wales at the next UK general election, expected to be held next year, and at future elections of Police and Crime Commissioners covering Welsh police force areas.

Indications from England suggest that large numbers of people are likely to be disqualified from the democratic process.

According to the Conservative government at Westminster, the new rule is necessary to stop voter fraud.

Yet it is indisputably the case that voter fraud is so rare in the UK that hardly anyone has been convicted of it. In 2021 one person was convicted of the crime of “personation” and another acquitted.

Caution

Kent Police issued cautions to two people for the same offence of personation. A woman used her mother’s polling card to try to vote in a local government election after her father suggested doing so. The polling station staff suspected that she was not the voter named on the polling card. Father and daughter both accepted a caution after the police had obtained advice from the Crown Prosecution Service.

In 2022 there were no proven cases of personation at all.

Tackling voter fraud in the UK would seem to be a case of using a sledgehammer to crack a non-existent nut.

But while that may be an accurate way of looking at the situation, it’s also naive.

The fact is that the Conservatives are borrowing from a right-wing playbook that has been deployed in the United States since not long after the Civil War in the 1860s.

In the late 19th and the early 20th centuries, Southern states passed so-called Jim Crow laws – named after a pejorative term for black people – to suppress poor and racial minority voters. These included poll taxes and literacy tests.

Most of such voter suppression tactics were made illegal after the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, when Lyndon Johnson was President.

Racial discrimination

However, there has continued to be racial discrimination against black voters, especially in the Southern states. In 2018, for example, 87,000 people in Georgia were unable to vote because they were deemed to have registered late.

It’s the case that many of the strictest voting regulations are in swing states and have been enacted primarily by Republican Party politicians. According to an investigation by American Public Media, “A disproportionate number of those potential voters were people of colour or young voters, groups that typically favour Democrats.”

Voter suppression can take a variety of forms. An analysis of a Florida election in 2012 found that more than 200,000 people didn’t vote because of long queues at polling stations, mostly in areas where people tended to vote Democrat. Some were forced to wait between six and seven hours before they could cast their ballot, and many gave up.

In 2013, after the US Supreme Court struck down a crucial section of the Voting Rights Act, several states enacted voter ID laws. Many argue that such laws amount to voter suppression against African-Americans.

Imported

Interestingly, voter ID is the method of voter suppression being imported by the Conservatives into the UK.

Under the new arrangements, valid forms of ID that will be accepted by polling clerks include passports, driving licences and older or disabled person’s bus passes. The list does not, however, include bus passes held by younger people, who coincidentally – or maybe not – are less likely to vote Conservative.

People without any of the qualifying documents could apply for a free alternative, known as a Voter Authority Certificate.

But when the deadline to apply to get a certificate in time for England’s local elections passed earlier this week, only around 4% of those thought to be in need of such a certificate had done so – 85,185 out of around two million.

Many remain unaware of the new rule, despite the efforts of the UK Government and council officials responsible for running the elections.

Police forces across England have been alerted to the fact that there could be trouble at some polling stations when would-be voters are turned away.

It’s all so unnecessary and, fairly obviously, part of the toxic legacy of Trump. Who can doubt that the Tories learned of such tactics at his knee?

Increase turnout

In Wales, the drive since devolution has been to increase voter turnout. It’s a matter of frustration that at all six National Assembly and now Senedd elections, there has never been an instance when at least 50% of those registered to vote have done so.

There have been various initiatives aimed at increasing turnout among certain groups, like the young – especially now the voting age has gone down to 16 at Senedd and council elections – and people from ethnic minorities.

It must be very demoralising for those involved in such efforts to see a measure introduced that is aimed not at increasing the number of voters but at reducing turnout still further.

Voter suppression is, at the end of the day, no more than legalised cheating. It’s a disgrace and it shames those who are introducing it.

Let’s hope the next non-Tory Westminster government gets rid of it.