Theresa May and the Tories are plotting to deny Windrush Brits the right to vote

The vile UKIP-pandering anti-immigrant legislation that Theresa May introduced in 2014 has been used to deny employment, housing, social security, pensions, NHS care and even UK residency to Windrush Brits without the documentation to prove their citizenship.

After her initial attempts to just ignore the Windrush scandal became totally untenable Theresa May was cornered into apologising. She reluctantly told a gathering of Commonwealth leaders how "genuinely sorry" she was for the Windrush scandal in the hope that apologising through gritted teeth would make coverage of her despicable treatment of Windrush Brits go away.

But despite her apology Theresa May and the Tories are still working away behind the scenes to deny Windrush Brits even more rights, through through new voter ID laws that are being trialled in five local authority areas at the local elections, meaning those without photo ID will be denied the right to vote.

The excuse behind the voter ID laws is that it's intended to prevent voter fraud, but there is no evidence base at all to suggest that voter fraud is a serious enough issue to justify denying citizens without ID the right to vote.

In fact there has only been one solitary conviction for the crime of personation at the polling booth relating to the 2017 General Election, meanwhile an astounding 49% of all complaints of electoral fraud were made against the political campaigners themselves [source for both stats: Electoral Fraud Analysis by the Electoral Commission].

If the Tories were actually serious about cracking down on electoral fraud, they'd deal with the enormous mountain of fraud committed by political campaigners, rather than the tiny molehill of people impersonating others at the polling station.

Of course it's wrong that a tiny tiny minority of people try to commit voter fraud by impersonating others at the polling booth, but if your solution to that problem involves denying the right to vote to a significantly larger number of innocent people (or even one innocent person) then your claims to be acting in the interests of democracy are clearly a total farce.

The true motivation for these new voter ID laws is obvious. Poor people and elderly commonwealth citizens are far more likely to have no photographic ID, and they're also much more likely to vote against the Tory party than in favour of them (especially in light of the disgraceful Windrush scandal).

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR