The Liberal Democrats demanded that Tory Party leader Greg Hands launch an investigation into how Conservative campaign literature told voters they would not need to verify their identity in next week’s local elections.
The move came after it was revealed that the local Norwich Conservative Federation had been distributing leaflets that incorrectly stated “You don’t need ID to vote”.
said Simon Jones, leader of the Norwich Conservatives I that the error was due to his local activists downloading a template from the Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) “Campaign Toolkit”, which incorrectly stated that voter ID was not required when the May 4 elections were held.
However, the electoral law introduced by the government now requires voters to bring an accepted form of identification to the polls in order to vote.
“As a local conservative association, we delivered them in small numbers before we realized they were wrong, but we put the shipments on hold as soon as the problem became apparent,” Mr. Jones said. “We offer our unconditional apologies to the residents who received this message and will contact you as soon as possible to correct the error.”
This was stated by the representative of CCHQ. I that the templates are “no longer in use” but declined to confirm when they were pulled from the party’s “campaign toolkit” or how many were distributed around the country.
Despite repeated inquiries about whether the templates would be available during the current local election campaign, a CCHQ spokesperson said, “I can’t name a schedule.”
The Liberal Democrats have called on the Conservative Party to investigate how the flyers were printed and delivered and what precautions were taken to ensure this does not happen again.
It comes after figures showed that only 85,000 of the two million people who do not have the correct voting ID applied for a free voting certificate before Tuesday’s deadline.
MP Helen Morgan, the Lib Dem spokesperson in local government, said: “The Conservatives, not content with disenfranchising people with their divisive and unnecessary voter ID schemes, seem to have misled people into thinking they don’t have a photo ID. required for voting. This shows that they treat voters with extreme disdain.
“The Conservative Party should conduct a proper investigation into how these highly misleading leaflets were printed and distributed.”
Ms Morgan added that Conservatives would need to confirm how many campaign pamphlets were printed across the country and how many voters in local elections were “erroneously told they didn’t need photo ID to vote.”
“We urgently need answers to these questions or the Conservative Party will certainly have no choice but to abandon their voter identification measures before someone is unfairly barred from the polls,” Ms Morgan added. .
Valid ID includes a passport, driver’s license, proof of age, and travel cards for the elderly. However, student cards and youth tickets are not accepted.
Voter identification was introduced by the government to prevent voter fraud. Among the millions of voters in 2019 and 2017, one was convicted of vote rigging.