Boris Johnson turned away from polling station after forgetting to bring photo ID
Boris Johnson turned away from polling station after forgetting to bring photo ID
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/14955332
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.
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 ?
Boris Johnson is a dumb person's idea of an intelligent person.
I thought he was an intelligent person's idea of a dumb person.
He has at best an intelligence a bit above average, tough seems to believe he's some kind of genious.
Like in so many things, there seems to be a sort of Dunning-Krugger Effect when it comes to intelligence, with the "just above average" up to what I call "entry level genious" - i.e. those just about intelligent enough to frequently outsmart most people - often vastly overestimating their own mental capabilities.
(Think Elon Musk if you need another example).
It probably doesn't help that in the environment he grew up and lives, those who intellectually can run circles around him won't actually tell it to his face and instead just use him if they can or keep quiet to avoid some kind of negative reprecursions if they're in a position of less power.
What he does have which is vastly superior to most people is the lack of scruples and of morals: there are definite advantages in terms of outwittting others for those who lie and deceive with the same naturality as breathing. That is however not intelligence, just a mix of sociopathy and public school training.
More specifically, he's a public school boy's characterisation of a modern rakehell
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.
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.
Yeah, no need for ID to vote here in Australia. Just rock up at any polling place and give your name and they'll cross your name off.
Don't even need ID to register to vote. Any other person on the electoral roll can vouch for your identity.
He's not hurting the people he needs to be
"Don't you recognize me?"
"I'm sorry Mr. Busey, but you still need valid ID."
lol
Master of publicity
I legit did a Nelson, "HA-HA." As soon as I read the headline
!leopardsatemyface@lemm.ee is slightly more active (that one looks like it's been closed).
I hear people are being turned away. But whenever I vote, I stroll down the road to a basically empty room, in and out in a couple of minutes. All in all, 20 minutes max. If I forgot ID it would be very little effort to just go get it.
Am I just incredibly lucky to live that close?
Yes.
You're lucky that you live close enough, or that you're not popping in on your dinner break, or on your way between jobs, and don't have time to nip home to pick up your ID.
Your lucky that you're not elderly or disabled and struggling to get to the polling station at all, never mind having the opportunity to get there and back easily.
I live in a place where ID isn't required. In fact, I can register there without ID. It's really nice, and voter fraud is quite minimal despite this
.
Los Angeles California
Not really, my local polling place I drive straight past on my way home, it probably takes five minutes out of my day at most.
Any functioning democracy should be like this.
I'm in Arizona and have had to wait in line for a couple of hours before. They also purged a bunch of voter registrations before without informing people, so quite a few had to cast provisional ballots and hope they got counted.
Yes, sometimes people have to go to the next town. But, the easier is when you can vote by mail.
And he farted yesterday.
Why would this be the onion? Why should they let him vote without an ID
Be a shame if he got deported.
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.
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.
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..
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.
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 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".
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.
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.
It's a bad thing everywhere. The Tories brought it in because they thought it would suppress voters who were likely to vote against them.
Can't speak for the UK/EU, but in the US, there's a long history of state governments trying to disenfranchise minority voters, especially in the South where slavery was legal for longer. This was accomplished in the past with so-called "literacy tests," and more recently by closing certain polling booths or understaffing them. Since millions of Americans don't have IDs that fit strict standards, many see these voter-ID laws as another form of disenfranchisement.