British Conservatives Are Being Accused of Rigging Elections in Their Own Favor
The ruling British Conservative Party, the Tories, are being accused of manipulating future national elections in their own favor. Before the next nationwide general election in 2022, the government must determine the next set of parliamentary legislative boundaries for the House of Commons, the country’s lower chamber in the parliament.
According to recently published proposals from the country’s various boundary commissions, the government is planning to reduce the number of parliamentary constituencies or seats from 650 to 600. However, analysis from political websites Electoral Calculus and PoliticalBetting.com have indicated that these specific changes may benefit the Tories in which an increase in predominately whiter, older, and wealthier constituencies could boost the outcomes of a future Conservative majority despite a gradual lack of support in the popular vote. Furthermore, some Tory members, including former London mayor Boris Johnson, and Democratic Unionist Party members from Northern Ireland would also lose seats under this current proposal. Many opponents from the opposition and electoral reform advocates hope that these conservative members would join them in voting against the proposals sometime in late 2018.
The current Tory government proposals on mandating voter identification at the polls have also faced opposition from electoral reform organizations and opposition parties such as Labor due to potential disenfranchisement against younger, poorer, and non-white voters as well as a more than $25 million budget to implement the system. There have been only 28 reports of alleged polling station impersonations during the last election in 2017.
These proposals have allegedly been compared to that of American conservative efforts to institutionally influence elections. From gerrymandering to voter identification and registration restriction laws, it appears that conservative America’s partisan and ideological allies across the Atlantic pound are mirroring their own efforts to maintain power as well as relevance.
