Johnson introduced the Elections Act in 2022 while prime minister. Under the act, voters must bring photographic ID to cast their ballots.
The rules were criticized by advocacy groups and the U.K.’s Electoral Commission, the country’s official election watchdog, which said they could prevent hundreds of thousands of people from voting in a future general election.
Those people, moreover, are more likely to be poorer, from minority ethnic backgrounds, and disabled, the watchdog said. They are also less likely to vote for Johnson’s Conservative Party.
The rules are likely to remain in place for the next U.K. general election, expected to be held later this year. The Electoral Commission says the law’s disenfranchising effect will very likely be greater in a general election.
Johnson’s fellow Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg, who was also part of the government that introduced the restriction, admitted in 2023 that the rules had been an attempt to “gerrymander” future elections for the Conservatives — but that they had backfired because older people, who are more likely to vote Conservative, were also less likely to be aware of the changes.
“We found the people who didn’t have ID were elderly and they, by and large, voted Conservative,” he said. “So we made it hard for our own voters and we upset a system that worked perfectly well.”
While Johnson may be pushing pension age, he can’t exactly claim ignorance of the changes.