![]() ![]() The boundary review was a disaster for us with some safe Conservative wards broken up, whilst several marginal wards were made even more marginal than before. Three main factors combined to see the first Labour victory in the 26-year life of Medway Unitary: an extensive boundary review which saw the creation of two more wards and four additional council seats the unpopularity of the Conservative government on a number of fronts together with an openly split Conservative Group and a corresponding somewhat fragmented election campaign across our three constituency parties. However, the result is more nuanced than that, with a number of factors combining to create a perfect storm, allowing Labour to win control. ![]() There will no doubt be those who seek to use statistics as some sort of consolation, but even if our share of the vote did increase by a miserly 0.5 per cent that could not match the Labour increase of over five per cent. Not just because we lost control of the Council after 23 years, but the manner in which it was lost and the underpinning reasons, some of which could have been avoided. On a gloomy day for us Conservatives on May 4th, few places were gloomier than here in Medway. Finally, the paper will recommend how to reframe the standards articulated in Harper to take into account this structural socioeconomic bias inherent in, and damaging to, the right to vote.Cllr Alan Jarrett is the Leader of the Conservative Group on Medway Council Marion County – and how that indifference tracks the conflict over the socioeconomic burdens of voting raised in Harper. It will examine how the courts have been indifferent to the costs levied upon on the right to vote by voter identification laws – most recently in the Supreme Court’s decision in Crawford v. The paper will then consider the potential socioeconomic impact of photo identification laws upon voters and how those impacts are similar to historical class-based discrimination. Virginia, which held that the ability to pay a poll tax had no relationship with the right to vote and, the paper contends, articulated a vision of the right to vote unencumbered by class bias. Then it will discuss the history of voter access in the United States, with a focus on Harper v. This article begins by providing an overview of American photo-identification laws and discussing the modern cost of voting to the voter. This article contends that this type of exclusion is antithetical to the nature of democracy and ultimately constitutes a tyranny of the majority against the minority at the lowest level of socioeconomic status. The potential effect of such photo-voter identification laws is that the voters at the lowest end of the socioeconomic scale are effectively excluded from voting because they are the least able to afford the cost of voting exacted by the law. These laws are similar to other restrictions on the franchise, such as property requirements and poll taxes, because the rules required the voter to demonstrate the ability to meet an economic test – the ability to show a certain property value, the ability to pay a tax, or the ability to obtain a photo ID. ![]() This article argues that photo identification laws represent a continuation of the use of economic forces as a way to block people of lower economic status from participation in the electorate.
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