Tens of thousands of voters were turned away from polling stations this month as new mandatory voter ID rules were brought into force.
Analysis of council data suggests an eye-watering number of people did not vote in the elections because they lacked the correct ID.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, who had been supportive of the move while in Government, subsequently said it was an attempt at “gerrymandering” that had backfired to suppress the Tory vote.
Speaking at the National Conservatism conference in Westminster, he said: “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.
“We found the people who didn’t have ID were elderly and they by and large voted Conservative, so we made it hard for our own voters and we upset a system that worked perfectly well.”
A Bylines Times investigation has unveiled the scale of voter disenfranchisement, finding that 16,201 voters across 53 council areas were turned away in the local elections – and 6,036 (around 39 per cent) did not return to vote.
Manchester, Sandwell, and Walsall reported the highest figures turned away, with 1,649, 1,135, and 797 electors respectively being denied a ballot due to issues with photo ID. In Manchester, 539 of them did not return, in Sandwell – 340, and in Walsall, 294.
In Dudley, a whopping 84 per cent of the 232 electors turned away did not come back to vote. In Herefordshire, it was 59 per cent. Telford, Knowsley, Stockport and NE Lincs all saw a majority of those turned away not come back to vote.
Liberal Democrat Local Government Spokesperson Helen Morgan MP told Byline TImes: “From the outset, this voter ID law was anti-democratic and frankly anti-British. It is shameful that so many voters were turned away when exercising their right to vote…
“There must be an investigation into the real reason Conservative Ministers pushed ahead with this reform and an apology issued to the thousands of voices silenced by these new laws.”
Related: ‘We’re in the death throes of the last-ever Tory majority’ – Tice
