Image: WikiCommons.
The UK Government has announced that it will celebrate the centenary of the 1918 Representation of the People Act by establishing a National Democracy Week. Yet Conservative-led governments have, since 2010, repeatedly undermined democracy. For example, after the Electoral Commission warned the government in 2014 against being too hasty in bringing in a new untested voter registration system, they not only ignored the advice, but instead accelerated the process, and consequently, almost 2 million people dropped off the electoral register – comprising mainly those who were among the most disempowered in society, such as students, the poor and minority ethnic groups in inner cities. Furthermore, when the Electoral Commission advised all parties to abide by the agreed limits on spending on election campaign, the Conservative government changed the law and increased the limit by 23%, so it could outspend other parties in the 2015 elections. But their spending still ended up exceeding the raised limits. And they are not likely to be deterred from doing it again since they were fined a paltry £70,000 by the Electoral Commission for their transgression.
Now they want to ‘strengthen’ democracy by bringing in Voter ID requirements. Their inspiration for what can only be described as the wielding of sledgehammers to crack invisible nuts is clearly the US Republicans, who have for decades been devising new ways to stop groups more likely to vote for their opponents from voting at all. Research in the US has found that Republican Voter ID laws might have prevented up to 31 cases of voter fraud out of a billion votes cast between 2000 and 2014. The Brennan Center at New York University estimated that 11% of eligible voters in the US lack the kind of photo ID that are generally required by these laws, and ‘they are disproportionately black, Latino, low income, students and elderly voters.’
