Electoral Dysfunction

Unlike Boris Johnson, I remembered to take my voter ID to the polling station today, so I was able to vote to elect both a local councillor and the local Police and Crime Commissioner.  The latter really is a Mickey Mouse position - in reality they have little actual power over the police (let alone crime, unless they are committing them all themselves).  The fact is that until the Tories came up with this nonsensical position, we actually did have democratic oversight of local police forces via Local Police Authorities, which were part of the local councils we elected.  But the Tories just love to keep reinventing the wheel, but square, rather than actually come up with anything new and/or progressive.  I've always thought, though, that I should change my name to 'Gordon' and stand for election as Police and crime Commissioner.  That way, if I was elected, I'd be 'Commissioner Gordon'.  In fact my whole manifesto could be that we abolish those expensive cops and instead set up a Bat Signal to illuminate every time a crime is committed locally, in the hope that Batman or some other superhero might see it.  It's certainly more of an idea than any of the policies put out by actual candidates for the role.

Getting back to that voter ID, as I'm one of those weirdos who still has an old style non-photo driving licence (I've never had need to change it), a passport so expired that the photo doesn't look remotely like me and isn't old enough to have an OAP bus pass, I have to rely on a piece of paper with my photo on it issued by the council.  As the photo is a selfie and the whole application process was online, I'm not sure quite this document proves that I'm who I say I am more than the old system of giving my address at the polling station and confirming my name against the electoral register for that address.  But hey, we seemingly have an obsession with proving our identities these days, in order to access the services that we've already paid for.  Not that it has anything to do with making access any more secure, rather it is to discourage as many people as possible from actually enjoying those services.  Particularly democracy itself - we've got to the stage where the Tories are so unpopular that their only policy now is to prevent as many people as possible from voting in the hope that it will narrow their margin of defeat to being merely slightly embarrassing rather than an utterly humiliating defeat.