Unelected Lords are our Last Defence Against the Government’s Undemocratic Elections Bill

Unelected Lords are our Last Defence Against the Government’s Undemocratic Elections Bill

Heading to the upper chamber for its second reading, Maddy Dhesi sets out how the controversial Elections Bill is a dangerous attack on British democracy in the name of British democracy

Ask anybody about the problems with British democracy and the chances are that the need for voter ID won’t come up – and with good reason: there have only been two convictions for voter fraud since 2017.

Yet, the Elections Bill – which seeks to introduce photo ID at polling stations – has passed through the House of Commons, despite a report by Parliament’s Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee’s (PACAC) criticising the bill’s lack of pre-legislative scrutiny.

While fraud is evidently not a problem in need of solving, voter turnout is.

In the 2019 General Election, only 54% of voters aged 18-25 voted in comparison to 74% of people aged 65 and over. Turnout for Black, Asian, and ethnic minority voters was 11% lower than white voters. This election also saw 71.2% of the 32 million votes cast wasted as a result of Britain’s ‘first past the post’ electoral system.

This all points to Westminster’s inclination towards excluding people already under-represented in public life – and the Elections Bill will only exacerbate this and further silence the marginalised political voices of ethnic minorities, migrants and young people. This is because voter ID proposals bypass the racial disparity of those who have access to photo identification and excludes young people’s travel cards from the accepted lists of ID to vote.

Calls by EU citizens on the Settlement Scheme for the implementation of a physical proof of status have been dismissed by the Government as costly, impractical, and prone to fraud – but the £20 million ‘free’ electoral identity card scheme (entirely funded by local councils) deemed necessary. 

The Elections Bill also sets out a new path for EU citizens’ voting rights. Under the current proposals, EU citizens with either settled or pre-settled status retain the right to vote in local elections. However, EU citizens who arrived in the UK after 31 December 2020 do not have that right, unless their country of origin has secured a bilateral treaty agreement with the UK. So far, there have only been four of these agreements: with Spain, Luxembourg, Poland, and Portugal.

This creates a seemingly arbitrary voting eligibility for EU citizens. An Italian citizen that arrived in the UK before 2021, for instance, would have the right to vote – but not an Italian citizen who arrived after 2021.

If the Government continues with this approach, voting will require knowledge, not only of a person’s nationality, but also their status in the UK, the date of their arrival, and whether or not the country they come from has a bilateral agreement with the UK. This level of complexity and criteria carries the risk of effectively disenfranchising EU citizens.

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Youth turnout is the lowest of all ages in UK general elections and any barrier placed in front of the ballot box – whether as a result of forgetting your ID on polling day or not even knowing you had the right in the first place – sets a dangerous precedent of a future of democratic disengagement. 

Young people are inheriting decisions made by past generations that they did not mandate and the challenges left for future generations will only be solved by a Parliament that represents all of us. This will not be achievable unless work is done to encourage youth turnout – which policies such as voter ID actively discourage.

The Coronavirus pandemic is a valuable opportunity to build on a rare increase of political knowledge and community participation. Instead, some of the very people who were affected most by the crisis will find it harder to have a say.

The increased use of first past the post in elections for regional mayors and police and crime commissioners – and the Labour Party’s failure to endorse proportional representation as an alternative voting system – paint a bleak picture of policies being put forward by the Government, and the appetite of opposition parties to listen to people wanting their voices to be heard.

Solving these problems is possible. Wales and Scotland both have proportionally representative electoral systems, allow 16 and 17 year olds to vote, and grant all foreign nationals the right to vote – a ‘one rule fits all’ solution that would decide voting eligibility by residency rather than nationality, ensuring that so long as an individual is resident in the UK, they have the right to vote. 

Instead, the Government is pursuing a path unbefitting of modern democracy. And we are forced to rely on an unelected second chamber to defend against it. 

Maddy Dhesi is a member of the Young Europeans Network and Hands Off Our Vote