Stop the Student Votes: Leaked Memo Exposes the Real Purpose of Voter ID 

A leaked memo from the Veterans Minister Johnny Mercer has finally given the game away about what the real purpose of the Government’s Voter ID law was.

In the memo, Mercer reveals that he repeatedly lobbied Downing Street for veterans to be able to use their veteran ID cards in order to vote.

His requests were denied by those around Rishi Sunak due to fears that it would “open the floodgates” to students also being allowed to use their ID cards to vote.

This is particularly revealing as it suggests that the Government’s real motivation for imposing voter ID was not to prevent fraud, as they claim, but to prevent certain groups of voters from voting. 

The omission of student IDs from the list of accepted voter IDs was always suspicious. As Byline Times reported at the time, the list includes multiple forms of photo ID used by older voters, while deliberately excluding forms of ID used by younger generations.

The Government has always struggled to justify this. Now we know why.

Jacob Rees-Mogg Says Voter ID was Attempt to ‘Gerrymander’ Elections for the Conservatives

The former minister in Boris Johnson’s Government has admitted that the requirement to show ID at polling stations was an attempt to advantage his party, reports Adam Bienkov

Adam Bienkov

Mercer is not the first Government figure to give the game away about the real purpose of voter ID. 

As we reported last year, the former Brexit minister Jacob Rees-Mogg admitted to the National Conservatism Conference that the ID law which was dreamt up by Boris Johnson’s Government, was in reality a “clever scheme” to “gerrymander” elections towards the Conservatives.

However, he suggested that the plans had “backfired” due to many older Conservative voters being less aware of the changes.

“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”, Mogg said.

One of those bit by the scheme was Johnson himself, who was reportedly blocked from voting at this year’s recent local elections due to not having the correct ID.

However, while the Johnson story grabbed the headlines, the changes also disenfranchised large numbers of ordinary voters, often for obscure reasons.

Individuals this paper spoke to say they struggled to get their ID accepted at polling stations, with one attempted voter barred from voting due to him having grown a beard.

The exclusion of veteran ID cards as an acceptable form of ID also had an effect with British Army veteran Adam Diver telling this paper that his veteran ID was refused as “unacceptable”.

“I felt deflated and invalidated for my service” he told us.

“I still feel rubbish about it, hours later. I served for 27 years, and the staff still said no. I thought if you could use it anywhere, you should be able to use it for voting.”

“Initially, I felt angry, but now I just feel deflated. I’m concerned that other veterans might not know about these rules. I run veterans groups and have conversations with them every day”.

Following our report a Government spokesperson told this paper that they were now “consulting” on allowing veteran ID card.

However, no such consultation on also allowing student ID yet appears to be taking place.