The Elections Bill Does Anything But Help Voters Vote
Often after hearing of the latest piece of legislation passing you feel hopeless at your own lack of ability to resist. Though you can sign petitions, march, or write letters, the only guaranteed way to create change is by voting.
Even so, voting in the UK is not treated with the gravitas it deserves. In the UK, there are 9 million eligible voters missing from the electoral register and 26 seats in Parliament that were elected in 2019 on a margin of less than 2% between the winners and losers. In these seats, it can be up to sometimes just hundreds of voters to change election results. If all 9 million unregistered voters went out and voted it can create great change. Without a doubt needs to be done to persuade people to vote.
But some people living in the UK don’t even have the right to vote. Voting eligibility is different across the UK. In Wales and Scotland, the franchise is significantly wider with not just 16-17 years olds having the right to vote but all residents having the right to vote. This means all foreign nationals living in Wales and Scotland, no matter their country of origin, can vote. The situation is significantly narrower and more complicated across the rest of the UK. The voting age is 18 but non-citizen voting rights are skewed. In local elections Commonwealth and EU citizens have the right to vote and in General Elections, just Commonwealth citizens. This means that any migrants who are not from Commonwealth or EU countries do not have the right to vote in England and Northern Ireland. In London alone this means over 377,000 migrants do not have the right to vote.
So, voting isn’t quite for all in the UK - there are obvious problems of voter apathy and voting inaccessibility in Westminster elections. And there is a Elections Bill currently approaching the House of Lords which has the potential to combat these problems. Unfortunately, the Elections Bill is full of wasted opportunities, and instead only exacerbates the existing problems within our elections.
The most notorious policy move in the Bill is voter ID - mandatory photo ID checks for voters at polling stations - if you forget your ID you are denied a vote until your identity is proven, a big step away from the current election system where voters can turn up without their ID or polling card. Though at face value voter ID does not seem like too big a hassle, the reality is that it will further isolate marginalised communities from politics.
Access to photo ID also carries a racial disparity. Whilst over three quarters of White people are reported to have at least one type of photo ID, only 48% of Black people and 31% of Asian people can say the same. Under Voter ID, rejected voters are more likely to be people from BAME backgrounds, creating an electoral system that is more of a reflection of the UK’s White population whilst excluding ethnic minority groups that are already barely represented in the House of Commons. Trans and non-binary people, homeless people, young people, older people, and disabled people are all also less likely to have access to acceptable photo ID.
When there are 9 million people missing from the electoral register, voter fraud is far from the biggest problem of our elections. In fact, Matt Hancock himself admitted there were only six cases of ballot fraud in the 2019 election. The scheme is forecasted to increase the cost of General Elections by up to £20,000,000 per General Election through the ‘free voter card’ scheme the Government is fighting off the inaccessibility of voter claims with. There are an estimated over 3.5 million people in the UK who do not have photo ID and make the cost of voter ID so high.
The Elections Bill is also causing increased chaos with non-citizen voting rights. The contrast between Wales and Soctland’s simple and fair system of residence based voting rights with England and Northern Ireland’s arbitrary system based on nationality highlights the latter approach as being very complicated. And the Elections Bill is making this worse. The Bill proposes that only EU citizens who qualify for the EU Settlement scheme – by arriving before 31st December 2020 – would preserve voting rights in UK General and Police and Crime Commissioner elections. This creates a discrepancy for EU voters because future EU citizens that enter the UK would only be eligible to vote if they are from member states that have bilateral agreements with the UK. At the time of writing, the government has deals with just four countries: Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, and Poland.
Using the Elections Bill to move local elections to a system of residence-based voting rights would allow all residents living in England and Northern Ireland to be able to vote. Without a residence-based voting system, eligibility for voting rights could vary wildly between EU citizens, creating unnecessary confusion and difficulties for all potential voters. If finding out whether or not you can vote is harder than voting, what motivation is there to vote?
The policies of voter ID and changes to EU citizens’ voting rights are undemocratic. Both policies make voting harder, not easier and for a Bill all about Elections, it disregards the most important part of elections: voters themselves. The Elections Bill must be reassessed with voter’s interests at its heart.
Written by Maddy Dhesi
By Maddy Dhesi a democracy campaigner with the3million Young Europeans Network for residence based voting rights in England and Northern Ireland
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