It’s unnecessary
Name + DOB + address
Comment on Voter ID in England led to racial and disability discrimination, report finds
Aux@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I don’t understand what the problem is. A lot of countries require an ID to vote, that’s normal practice. Why is British public such snowflakes about it?
PunnyName@lemmy.world 9 months ago
SirQuackTheDuck@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I’ve had voter ID for as long as I know, and I’ve been with my parents to vote very often (good educating on their part).
It’s never been an issue, you bring your ID, your voter ticket (which gets sent to you by the govt) and cast a vote. No racism issues there.
It seems the UK has somehow fucked it up.
PunnyName@lemmy.world 9 months ago
And yet, it would be even less of “never been an issue” to have it in the first place. Shocking!
ReCursing@kbin.social 9 months ago
That would be the tories for you, yes
Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de 9 months ago
How is that secure though? I could easily figure out that information for people of my gender and in my age range…
snooggums@kbin.social 9 months ago
And yet, nobody was doing that and the system was working.
Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
So what do you do? Do you turn up and give the details for Double_A, vote, then turn around and pretend that you’re now me, for example?
Or do you spend the day travelling around to different polling booths hoping that the person you’ve chosen from that area hasn’t voted yet, or that they nobody will make a fuss when it turns out they’re trying to vote twice?
Aux@lemmy.world 9 months ago
You get a bus full of old people, tour them around the city and tell them ID data to cast votes. Works like a charm for Putin. Voting without a passport is absurd.
Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de 9 months ago
Yes that, but very early so the chance is high that I vote before the real guy.
scootinfroody@feddit.uk 9 months ago
It isn’t, but that actually isn’t really a problem. The information required to pose and steal a single voter’s vote is pretty easy to come by. But it’s an absolutely terrible way to steal an election, simply because it doesn’t scale well.
While it is relatively simple and probably a low enough risk to steal a single vote, realistically to flip enough votes to guarantee a desired result you would need to do this several hundred or possibly even thousands of times. There are only so many disguises you can use or polling stations you can go to within an election constituency before you get caught. Also, there’s the time constraint involved. You need to do all this in the span of 12-18 hours on a single day. An individual cannot manage this by themselves.
So now you need to scale up your operation, so you enlist a whole bunch of people to split the vote stealing with. Now you have a conspiracy which is a huge risk to discovery, and also likely carries a more harsh punishment should you be discovered. Nobody is going to steal an election this way.
It is much easier to steal an election by targeting a later step of the process, either by compromising the integrity of the ballot boxes via corrupting election officials, or in areas where electronic voting takes place (not the UK) manipulating the tabulation of the votes somehow. In countries where democracy is valued, these steps of the process are hardened quite significantly, with multiple safeguards to prevent tampering.
Hillock@kbin.social 9 months ago
I think the biggest issue is simply that there was no need to change the system if there was no problem to begin with. Any changes to the system would lead to some people losing their ability to vote for no good reason.
If they stick with the law for a few decades no one will care anymore because everyone is used to it. But this year 14,000 people lost the ability to vote and they prevented 0.4 people from commiting voter fraud. That's not very proportional.
Aux@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Why would anyone lose their vote? Everyone should have a passport.
SuddenlyBlowGreen@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Why?
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 9 months ago
It even exists in Northern Ireland and has never been an issue. You can get photographic ID here for free for voting (but is also usable for proof of age) so it’s very useful
Aux@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Exactly! It’s not a problem anywhere in the world but England!
darq@kbin.social 9 months ago
The fact that "Voter ID in England led to racial and disability discrimination".
Maybe read the article?
Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 9 months ago
He doesn’t consider that to be a problem.
BakedGoods@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Is is hard to get an ID/passport in the UK or are their disabled people just even more disabled than in the rest of the world? Maybe the problem here is infrastructure (or lack thereof). You could be the most disabled person in Sweden and your caretaker would still take you to the tax agency or police to get identification of some sort. Not having any way to identify yourself is pretty much unheard of here except for the severely mentally ill who refuse help.
onymousol@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Passports are expensive & disabled people are poor. And no, there’s not much help for disabled people in Tory Britain. Also it’s a bit of a Catch-22, it’s hard to get ID that proves who you are without ID that proves who you are. Currently having that problem with a disabled family member and haven’t found a solution yet.
Aux@lemmy.world 9 months ago
What discrimination? Every citizen should have a passport. That’s how it works in every developed country!
darq@kbin.social 9 months ago
It's explained in the article. So I will say it again: "Maybe read the article?"
Not every citizen has a passport. And they usually aren't free either.
Aux@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Yeah, why? How’s this even possible? Or legal?
onymousol@lemmy.world 9 months ago
If passports were given out for free then sure, but they’re really fucking expensive. Mine expired years ago, but since I can’t afford to travel anyway I’m hardly going to scrape together the £80+ for a new one.
Aux@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Yeah, Britain is very weird. How do you even live without a passport? No wonder Britain has plenty of identity theft going on…