More than a hundred people in Brighton and Hove were not able to vote because they did not have the right ID.
Newly released figures show that 335 people turned up at polling stations without the correct ID.
Of these, 213 returned with accepted ID and were given a ballot paper – but 122 did not.
The figures do not include people who may have been informed outside the polling station about the ID requirement and never came in – or people who didn’t try and vote at all because of a lack of ID.
Among those turned away was Carol Homewood, who runs the Brighton Past Facebook page. She said: “I was turned away from voting. I knew I needed photo ID. I also knew I didn’t have a current passport or driving license.
“However, at some point, I had read, other photo ID would be acceptable. Granted I didn’t look further into it, and maybe I should have, but I turned up with a photo ID issued by Brighton Museums, I thought this would be sufficient but it wasn’t.
“Although I agree with showing some form of ID, I felt this new ruling to be overly strict and I’m sure many people didn’t or couldn’t vote because of it, or felt less inclined to vote because of it.
“If you work for a company who gives you photo ID you have already gone through checks with your employer to prove who you are, surely this should be sufficient?”
The total number of people eligible to vote in person in Brighton and Hove on Thursday, 4 May was 173,237.
Of these, 62,786 were given a ballot paper at the polling station – 36.2% of the electorate. Of those who turned up at the polling station, 99.8% were able to vote.
No breakdown is available of where people were turned away, or the demographic profile of those unable to vote.
This year, there were three wards where recounts took place because of small differences in votes for some candidates. Hannah Allbrooke (Green) lost by just six votes in Brunswick and Adelaide, Leo Littman (Green) lost by 32 votes in Preston Park and Ricky Perrin (Green) lost by just one vote in Regency.
A council spokeswoman said: “Following a successful campaign to promote the new regulations, we received 672 applications from residents for Voter ID.
“The Elections team will be sharing their learning, processes and newly developed documents with the Electoral Commission, Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Association of Electoral Administrators so that they can be incorporated into best practice and shared with other authorities for future polls.”
This is the first election where new voter ID laws, introduced by the Conservative government, were applied.
They were brought in as a measure to reduce in-person voting fraud, but have been criticised by many on the left who say they were actually an attempt to gerrymander the vote.
Yesterday, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, who was business secretary when the elections Act 2022 became law, 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.
“We found the people who didn’t have ID were elderly and they by and large voted Conservative, so we made it hard for our own voters and we upset a system that worked perfectly well.”
Valid forms of photographic ID include a UK, Irish or EU passport, a UK, Irish or EEA driving licence, a Translink 60+ Smartpass, a Translink Senior Smartpass, a Translink Blind Person’s Smartpass, a Translink War Disabled Smartpass, an Electoral Identity Card, a Translink Half Fare SmartPass or a biometric immigration document.
Expired passports or driving licences can be used as long as the holder still bears a likeness to the picture.
If they don’t understand what is required do we really want them to vote?
Maybe we could add an IQ test? Perhaps those under 30 should not be trusted to vote the right way as well? How about those women? They rarely get anything right so we should keep them out as well. Not to mention those “newly arrived” people eh? They don’t understand our country….
It was widely publicised that ID was needed and which sort. Lady should have checked.
It’s sad to hear that people who wanted to vote couldn’t, but there were several ways to produce valid ID and maybe I was lucky in having 4 valid photo passes that would have worked for me.
In my case, my driving license was the obvious one, because it also has my address on it.
I did worry when I dug out my passport, and only then found it is recently out of date and needs renewing.
But would this ID requirement have affected the election result? Some councillors may have lost or won by just a few votes but there’s no suggestion that the people who could not produce ID would have voted for them.
Maybe over time some survey can tell us if the need for ID when voting affected one party more than others.
Or possibly 121 attempts at fraudulent voting were avoided?
No it’s not possible. There is not and has never been any real voter fraud in this country, especially face to face voting.
So all those people with no ID didn’t read the messages on the polling card, bus shetlers, national press, natinal TV, council tax bill. They must be so unlucky…
Didn’t a Victorian steam punk tribute act recently lament that the Tory attempt at gerrymandering the vote had failed?
Precisely. Mogg openly confessed it was an attempt to pervert the election by making things more complicated.
Three of the votes were incredibly close.