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And that’s basically it!
The misstep was embarrassing for Johnson because the requirement to bring photo ID is a stipulation of the Elections Act which he introduced in 2022 while still in Downing
It's not the onion, because you can't make this shit up.
snort
As a person with no horse in the grinder, why is requiring ID a good thing in England/EU a good thing, but bad in the USA?
I’m very confused.
As someone who comes from a country where we do require photo ID for voting, not requiring one feels absurd, so I asked the same question. Apparently in the US, there is a part of the population that doesn't normally get photo ID and that part is mostly poor people and minorities and photo ID laws are used as means of disenfranchisement, similar to having the voting days during business days (when many people can't come to vote) or having voting stations far away in an area with limited public transport options.
Where I live in Finland, the police will actually grant you a temporary photo ID only for voting if you don't have one, although most people have passports. There are early voting stations in basically every post office for a week and the main voting day is always on a Sunday. No excuse to miss voting.
I've only missed one voting during my life, at a time when I was living in another country and there was no consulate in the part of the country I was in. Nowadays there's also the option of mail-in voting when outside the country, I don't know if it wasn't a thing back then or I just didn't know.
That's not to say I didn't want some improvements in our system: I'd like to see ranked choice voting or something similar here, there are some smaller parties I've been voting and it seems they seldom have a chance.
We've never really needed to use photo ID in England and never had problems with fraud. You can only visit one polling station one time, the system worked fine. The Tories changed it to deliberately disenfranchise the poor who are less likely to have these types of ID, and they did this because they're scum.
I feel like there's a simple solution: Government issues free photo IDs to everyone, you need to pay for it if you destroy/lose it while it's still valid.
There was an ID card system in the works in the UK a few years ago, but it was scrapped. There was a lot of opposition to it ok the grounds of civil liberties and privacy.
There’s a lot of wariness about a “paper’s please” society in the country, there hasn’t been a national ID system since just after WW2. Driver’s licenses and passports are used a sort of substitute, but even the UK drivers license doesn’t have to be carried to actually drive.
The proposed ID card system was also attached to an identity database system that was considered to have a lot of features creep and be too invasive.
A free, simple ID card system would probably make a lot of sense (the existing drivers license system could be repurposed/expanded for it), but there’s just a lot of uneasiness about it among the British for better or worse.
That really brings into perspective. Thank you. This is WILD.
Quick edit; how is voting not work time off for fucking EVERYONE
Voting ID requirements have not been universally seen as a good thing in the UK, there’s been a lot of opposition to it.
There is no national ID in the UK, instead there is a patchwork of secondary ID systems such as passports, drivers licenses, travel cards etc. In most cases they have a monetary cost or are not universally available.
It’s been seen as an attempt at voter suppression as many poorer British people may not have suitable ID. The rules also reject many forms of ID commonly held by younger voters, while accepting a wider range of ID held be older voters. There is supposed to be a free voting ID available but implantation has been left to local councils and has been criticised as hard to access.
The US (mostly the trending fascist party) does whatever possible to make sure the least amount of people possible get the opportunity to vote and for the people who do vote, make sure their vote does not count as much as possible. It also varies per state.
not giving out a national identification card, but then requiring an identification card to vote
voting districts with crazy borders to make absolute certain that the far right gets the most representatives possible https://www.maproomblog.com/xq/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wapost-gerrymander-1024x687.jpg
reducing the amount of voting centers every year in areas like major cities that vote more left so that the people would have to travel an hour or more to vote and without a car, it is almost impossible
Voting is not a public holiday and many states do not allow voting by mail. Combined with the before point removes many poor people's ability to vote at all
there is a right wing effort to remove as many left leaning votors as possible from registration for minor errors
Armed party members at elections recently to intimidate voters, especially if they "look like the left demographic"
the "electoral college" which can just decide to not cast the vote that actually decides elections for the candidates that the citizens voted for
It is really batshit crazy over there. It seems like the right gets away with all of this crazy stuff and then when the left is back in power, almost nothing is done to change it back with regards to voting.
It's bad in the USA because they have an aversion to all forms of registration.
It's unnecessary in most of Europe because they already have functional registries.
I don't know enough about UK election procedures to figure out why they thought it was necessary. It's probably not, but it's easy points for someone wanting to signal that they're doing something against the fictional illegal immigrants who are supposedly voting en masse whenever the right wing politicians don't get their way..
That is...not why it's bad in the USA. It's bad in the USA because it's used as a tool for voter suppression historically against black and brown people.
But sure, we're all afraid of registration, when you have to do that to vote either way 🙄
It isn't. There was no evidence of voting fraud but it does reduce the number of people who vote, and specifically older people who vote conservative are more likely to have photo ID via bus passes, etc, while younger voters in poor areas are likely to have none.
You can apply for ID free, but that requires effort that a lot of people can't be bothered with, especially when they constantly being told that "both sides are as bad as each other".
It's a very USA specific thing and people in other countries are often surprised this is such a big deal, because in many countries it's a non-issue. Mostly because having an ID is so ubiquitous in many places. People are often surprised that many Americans don't possess ID.
There's a lot of stuff about the US elections that's surprising to e.g. Europeans. Why do so many not have ID? Why do you so often have to wait in line for hours? Why do some areas apparently have not enough polling places? Why do I need to register to vote, sometimes repeatedly? Why is it so hard to get time off work to go vote? A lot of these seem like basic requirements for a functioning democracy.
The US election system has a bunch of historical quirks. And also to my eyes there seems to be a conscious effort from some government officials to make people not go vote.
In Europe, people have an ID since they are born. And, you need it to go to your neighboring countries which are never far away. Not having an ID is quite rare. You even have countries delivering it for free.
Also note that passports are valid IDs.
The Tories who were in power pushed it based on right wing conspiracy theories about immigrants because vulnerable populations least likely to have government documentation vote overwhelmingly labour.
It didn't really work though because old people also often let their passport and driving license lapse, department of work and pensions also already uses heavy handed documentation requirements as a way of fucking over people with mental health issues, criminal records, poverty etc who are less likely to have ID so the amount of people with ID in those groups is uncharacteristically high.
So yeah it's a bit of a nothing really, reduces voters on all sides but mostly the left and doesn't really seem to do much else.
Imagine going through the soul crushing hell of being a committed and earnest election worker in a failing 21st century democracy and then the clouds part and in one shining moment you can tell boris you have no idea who he is, but he'll need ID.
Like seriously consider it. Do you say "on your bike son"? Can you resist flipping him off? The joy he gave that one person might be the single act of good in johnson's entire life.
On bike? Flipping off? Boris Johnson?
I wonder how Boris feels about the current crop of carbrained Conservative candidates, given that supporting bikes was one of the few good things he did as mayor.
Not sure if you're serious or not.
He's LITERALLY the reason Tory MP's are both fucking useless, or leaving/quitting in droves. When he gutted the party for not backing his Brexit vote, he got rid of lots of established conservative politicians, replacing many with populists.
The Conservative party doesn't have many actual conservatives in it any more. Many feel that they've been forced out, and even those looking to join feel that they're just a right-wing party on the tails of Reform.
It's one of the reasons I'm so excited for a GE. It'll likely result in a Labour landslide, but it'll also potentially be the biggest decimation of the Tories since Thatcher, probably more so because she was still ultimately a Conservative. If they can't root out the populists, the party is basically dead.
Serious about him being better than the current crop on this very specific issue? Yes. Other than that, he's a piece of trash and a hack of a politician, so I don't disagree with you on that point.
Although frankly I'd be happy if conservatism was buried altogether, and not just "populist" conservatism. Both forms are incredibly harmful to the poor and the disadvantaged in general.
That’s a big part of the Boris Johnson myth. The “Boris bike” system in London was actually created by his Labour predecessor Ken Livingstone. The system officially opened shortly after Boris became mayor, who then took the credit for it.
The guy does ride a bike, but not as much as other’s coattails.
I've seen Boris "expansion of the london cycling network" up close and personal the few times I've decided to go for really long cycles away from London zones 1, 2 and 3 - the cycling "network" out there is basically made up of tiny blue signs with a white stylized cyclist symbol every half a mile or so along the side of the road and nothing else (not even paint on the road, just near invisible signs), but that was enough for him to claim he had added a huge number of miles to the London cycling network.
Boris "achivements" are invariably just traditional posh-boy lying: in a very strict sense not a lie, but using words ("cycling network") that leads others to understand one thing (actually usuable, properly marked "cycling lanes" that make it safer to cycle) which is completelly different from the reality (little signs on the side of the road that do not add up to a cycling lane or are even easilly spotted by drivers).
fuckin brilliant
I'm sorry sir, but you could be any random mental health patient.
What a bellend
Can we turn him away from the country for you know, forgetting to bring an actual identity ?
He's not hurting the people he needs to be
This fucking dingbat. Even if he was just a random citizen, he should know by now that you need to bring ID. And it’s always good to check if you have it when going to your polling station.
Here in the Netherlands, we’re VERY strict on ID. No ID, no vote. I’ve been witness to a fair few elections as a reporter, and it always gets drilled into the people who run the polling stations: even if the King himself walks in, you ask him for his ID and tell him to bugger off if he doesn’t have it. I’ve seen city mayors turned away at polling stations in their own council buildings for failing to produce ID. And they all perfectly understand why those strict controls are necessary.
And they all perfectly understand why those strict controls are necessary
To disenfranchise those without government issued ID
This is only really an issue if it's not free and convenient to get one, as in huge swaths of the US.
And also, the UK
And they all perfectly understand why those strict controls are necessary.
Coming from a country where no ID is required but everything still goes smoothly, I'm not sure strict ID controls actually are necessary.
The UK never needed ID, there was no evidence of voter fraud happening at polling stations. So voter ID was introduced.
There has been evidence of voter fraud happening via postal votes where no id is required.
The UK doesn't have any government ID, only ID by proxy like drivers license and passport. So poorer people and the elderly are less likely to have photo id. Only one group got an exception - the one that voted conservative.
The previous Scottish conservative leader committed electoral crimes live on TV. There was no consequences. But know people are further disincentivesed to vote, despite very little evidence of people fraudulent casting votes claiming to be someone else.
"Don't you recognize me?"
"I'm sorry Mr. Busey, but you still need valid ID."
lol
Master of publicity
Everyone makes mistakes
Yes, but the policy that requires voters to have photo ID was created by Boris himself when he was prime minister. That's the irony.
I legit did a Nelson, "HA-HA." As soon as I read the headline
And he farted yesterday.
