A Tory MP had to call on local members of his party to help him last night when he discovered he had no appropriate photo ID to vote.
Less than 12 hours before polls opened, Ipswich MP Tom Hunt asked if anyone would help him vote by proxy.
In a WhatsApp exchange later shared with ITV’s political correspondent Harry Horton, he said: “Bit of drama. Turns out I have no appropriate ID to vote tomorrow.
“However. There is an emergency proxy option if you lose your ID. Deadline tomorrow. Who would like to do the honours?”
Valid photographic voter ID is now essential for the electorate to cast their votes.
The government proposal passed through parliament in December 2022 after Hunt voted for it, alongside 291 other Conservative MPs.
It was then implemented for the first time for the May 4 2023 local elections, despite concerns about voter suppression.
An emergency proxy is meant for people who cannot vote in person. People can apply for that up until 5pm on polling day, as long as the person who votes on their behalf has their own form of accepted photo ID.
Hunt later responded on X, writing: “I do tend to be bad at losing stuff. I’m also very dyspraxic. Though I don’t want to blame this on everything it does make things challenging for me and I do my best but I do lose things and today it was my passport.
“I find it shocking how Labour figures locally have sought to exploit this situation. Saying ‘don’t be like Tom Hunt’, kind of like ‘don’t be dyspraxic’.
“They claim to want a more inclusive Parliament then pile on when I make a genuine human error.
“Thank you to the Ipswich Borough Council officers who helped me sort my proxy vote today. The vote is cast. No surprises how I voted.”
Hunt is the first MP to publicly face this major obstacle.
However, campaigners have been warning for months that this could disenfranchise voters.
The Electoral Commission said it could reduce voter turnout while London mayor Sadiq Khan said it was “designed to rig the next election” by stopping historically marginalised people from voting.
Even former Tory cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg also admitted the voter law was an attempt at “gerrymandering” elections which backfired.
He said: “We found the people who didn’t have ID were elderly and they by and large voted Conservative.”
He added: “So we made it hard for our own voters and we upset a system that worked perfectly well.”
Last week, Unlock Democracy showed under a tenth of voters who lack photo ID have applied for the government’s free form of identification.
Hunt was not the only Tory left red-faced over voter ID this morning.
Minister for veterans’ affairs Johnny Mercer admitted on X this morning that Veteran ID is not seen as an accepted form of ID.
He wrote: “I am sorry about this. The legislation on acceptable forms of ID came out before the veterans’ ID cards started coming out in January this year. I will do all I can to change it before the next one.”
The Conservatives are also on track to lose around half of their current council seats in what is expected to be a miserable night for the government.