COUNCIL DISENFRANCHISEMENT

2024-04-13

Like much of the UK, there are local elections where I live next month. After
coming home from a week of Three Rings volunteering I found my poll card on
the doormat. Can you spot the bleeding-obvious mistake?

This'll be the first election for which I've needed to bring photographic ID
to the polling station. That shouldn't be a problem: I have a passport and
driving license and whatnot.

But just to be absolutely certain, I had the local council - the same people
who issued me the polling card! - supply me with a voter authority certificate:

So now I'm in a pickle. West Oxfordshire District Council are asking me to
produce photo ID in the wrong name when I turn up at a polling station next
month. It doesn't even match the name on the photo ID that they themselves
issued me.

This would be less-infuriating were it not for the fact that they had my name
wrong in the same way on an electoral roll form they sent me in August 2022
(They'd had my name right before August 2022, including on previous poll
cards; I can only assume that some human operator "corrected" it to the wrong
thing at some point.). When I contacted them to have them fix it, they
promised that the underlying problem was solved (They didn't fix the problem
immediately in August 2022. Initially, they demanded that I produce proof of
my change of name from "Dan Que" (which has, of course, never been my name!)
to "Dan Q", and only later backed down and admitted that they'd made a mistake
and would correct the PII they were holding about me.) so this very thing
wouldn't happen.

And yet here we are.

Hopefully they'll be able to fix their records promptly or else I guess I'll
have to apply for a proxy vote, to allow the ballot of my imaginary friend
"Dan Que" to be cast by me, Dan Q, instead.

And if that isn't the most bizarre form of election fraud you've ever heard
of, I don't know what is.

Update: True to their word, the council had managed to correct their records
by the time I reached the polling station this morning. It's still a little
annoying that they somehow mucked it up in the first place, but I appreciate
the efficiency with which they corrected their mistake.

LINKS

Three Rings

Update