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Comment by lmm | Hacker News Reader

> "Elections are largely monopolized by older people who mostly tend to be homeowners".

> Sounds like democracy?

Young people might get their first chance to vote at age 23 - assuming they paid for the right kind of ID, or navigated an impenetrable web of underpaid bureaucrats to get the mythical free ID. And if they manage to get off work on election day. Meanwhile the elderly are reliably on the register (because they're not being forced to move around, because again they own a home) and encouraged to vote even if they're expected to die before the results take effect.

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California is one of the worst affected states for housing, and yet

> they paid for the right kind of ID, or navigated an impenetrable web of underpaid bureaucrats

Pretty much everyone starts driving around 16-18 and has a driver's license

> manage to get off work on election day

CA is an early voting state where ballots are mailed to you ~1 month in advance. You can drop them off at your convenience at one of the numerous drop-off locations.

Really, CA makes it as easy to vote as possible including same-day registration. There is no excuse for young people to not vote, except for their apathy.

I'm glad to hear we've finally put down that 1776 nonsense and restored California to the British crown.

Make America Great Britain Again!

I was referring to the idea that in an aging country, even if young/old people would equally show up to vote, the older people will have more votes.

Which is democracy. It is fair in that sense, although surely it will not feel that way at all times.

You could imagine a system where similar to how we split votes into geographical regions via things like electoral colleges or having a locally elected representatives, there could be a similar splitting of votes into age ranges to ensure each group is sufficiently represented

(Not advocating for this, just an interesting thing to think about)

Indeed, democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for lunch. It's just an unusual and new idea to see young people as a minority as this never was the case to this extend.

As it comes to housing though, I remain convinced that the issue is not as political as many make it out to be. See my other comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36486626

Meaning, even if the young seize more political power, there isn't going to be a law they can pass that says "cut rent in half".

There is also no law they can pass to reverse climatw change. Once some things are fucked, they are really hard to fix

Oh come on. If there was the mass of people who couldn't get registered to vote, the Democrats would pull out all the stops to get them registered.

You mean the SDP? They haven't been an independent party since 1983, and have been politically irrelevant for even longer.

Does the UK not have any equivalent of the US “motor voter” system? When we update our info at the department of motor vehicles, there’s a checkbox on the form to automatically register to vote. So getting on the register is mostly automatic once you have the paperwork in order to get a driver’s license (which is a necessity to function as an adult in most of the US).

I would guess that few countries have the type of situation that exists in the US where a driver's licence is almost essential in order to go about daily life.

Many people in the UK don't bother with a licence. It can be prohibitively expensive when you consider the costs of lessons, a vehicle, and of the licence itself.

    Many people in the UK don't bother with a licence.

Eh. "Many" is such a vague term. Like, 5% could be considered many. UK is a driving country, period.

    where a driver's licence is almost essential in order to go about daily life.

This is true in all highly developed countries if you live outside the largest cities. You need to drive. It is baked in the cost of your life. Renting is much cheaper outside of the city, but somewhat offset by the cost of driving.

“in the 5 years from 2015 to 2019, an average of 74% of people in England had a full driving licence“

The provisional licence is enough as a voter ID though. I just used it in the last election.

I note your statistic refers to "people" and not "adults". Usually, some proportion of the people of any given country are ineligible to receive a drivers licence on the basis of their age. It seems that age is 17 in the UK, although I'm not sure whether that counts as full or provisional until they've got a bit more experience. I'll assume full.

According to https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populati... there's about 1.2% of the people in each age group <17 in England, which means 1.2*17 ~= 20 of the people in the England are ineligible for a drivers licence. So there's only about 6% of people in the England who could have a full drivers licence, but don't. So either they give licences out in the cornflakes at Tescos, or almost the whole adult population of the UK wants a drivers licence.

It's 74% of eligible adults, not 74% of the population.

https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/culture-a...

Such problems only exist in third world countries, such as US or UK.

My country solves this by issuing a plastic ID card to each citizen. You apply for it at your local town hall, and it is free of charge. You can use that ID for voting, or any other interaction with the government when they need to confirm your identity. Hell, they even issued a smartphone application recently, that can be legally used as ID.

And in the US if you don’t want/need a driver’s license then you just get a state issued ID card. Easy peasy.

Does that card allow you to vote? Is it free to obtain? Do people know that such option exists?

I need a Google Chrome plugin to block all HN comments that include the term "third world countries". That term is so grossly out of date. Read about it on Wiki. Yes, in wealthy countries, it is a proxy for very poor countries. Still, I do not like that term in 2023. It feels lazy.

And more HN vagueness in this post: "My country" Why not just say your country name? After all, most of the world is developing. You don't have much to lose.

A provisional driving licence costs £34 (though you could also pay for the photo). I expect some young people get one primarily in order to be able to buy alcohol.

A passport costs £82.50 and is rather less useful as ID inside the UK because it doesn't show an address.

Every household gets sent a form once a year to register those people who are eligible to vote - ours is pre-populated with details of the current registrants

Thanks. I assumed there was something in place, and that the post above mine was a bit off the wall.

This is a wholly imaginary problem.

>Young people might get their first chance to vote at age 23 - assuming they paid for the right kind of ID, or navigated an impenetrable web of underpaid bureaucrats to get the mythical free ID.

uhh what? we're talking about britain here. I don't know what kind of yank(?) political dysfunction you're alluding to, but nobody has any trouble voting because of a lack of ID here. you don't need one to vote. you notify the electoral roll when you move into a house or flat, then a few weeks before election day you get a bit of paper in the post, you can bring it to the polling station to prove you live there.

You’re a little out of date with your info

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/about-14000-people-england-...

The article says that 70% of them hadn't bothered to bring their ID. Hardly the result of draconian laws, is it?

It also doesn't say how many of the 30% actually had the right to vote. It only says that they "brought a type that was not accepted".

That is not correct.

During the recent elections in England about 14,000 people were denied a vote due to lack of ID.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-65988959

Though since the correct ID is basically every kind of ID that's valid to buy age restricted goods like alcohol and stores have become more and more strict at checking that over the last few years that mostly seems to have been older people. (The government also permitted some other kinds of ID that older people are more likely to have access to in order to reduce this, but it didn't completely eliminate the problem and I'm pretty sure it wasn't expected to either.)

The press has, as usual, not been entirely honest about this. In particular, there was a talking point about how only one non-passport and non-driving license form of ID that young people are likely to have compared with much more forms of ID that older people will have, but that one form of ID is a blanket scheme that providers of ID sign up to in order for it to be valid as proof of age. There is no equivalent blanket scheme for ID that older people are likely to have.

Great Britain has 67 million people. 14,000 people is unlikely to swing any election, even if they all voted in lockstep.

14,000 in the right places could easily topple a government in a tight election because of FPTP - although one can obviously not choose in reality.

In 2017 for example the minimum number of votes across the country needed to take down Theresa May (or more realistically have her form a true minority government) was something like 2500.

We have an extremely disproportional electoral system.

That would have been 2500 in exactly the right places. 2500 in exactly the right places could also have given the Conservative Party even more seats.

If we are talking about 0.25% on average then I doubt it could have changed much in these local elections (back in May in England and Northern Ireland).

If anybody wants to play with the data from the General Election in 2017 they can do so here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2017_United_Kin...

Sort the table by "Mjrty." in ascending order. Right at the top we see wins for SNP, Labour, SNP, Labour, and Labour that easily could have been wins for Lib Dem, Tories, Tories, Tories, and Tories.

67m is the UK population, not the GB population.

And 67m is nothing close to the size of the electorate of the local elections that number comes from.

And as another commenter wrote, a small number of votes can matter a great deal.

This article says that 70% of them just didn't bring any ID with them. That's on them.

It also says nothing about the remaining 30% except that they "brough a type that was not accepted". We don't actually know if they even had the right to vote.

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/about-14000-people-england-...

Those who did have the right to vote could have gotten a free Voter Authority Certificate before the election:

https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-photo-id-voter-authority-certif...

The government has introduced a requirement for photographic ID for all UK parliament elections, as well as local elections in England. This has been quite heavily discussed, so I'm surprised you haven't heard about it.

> yank(?)

To be clear, it’s not a real problem in the US either, but some people like to pretend it is. Don’t believe things you read on Reddit or wherever.

oh I already know it's not, you don't even have to be alive to vote let alone show ID

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