Introduction of voter ID was a clear attempt to gerrymander that simply backfired on the Tories - Yorkshire Post Letters

Re: Voting ID and reducing voting age to 16 (Letter from Paul Morley, The Yorkshire Post, August 21).

It's a shame Paul Morley ignores evidence that requiring photo ID to vote was a device to affect election results. No less than Jacob Rees-Mogg said requiring photo ID to vote was gerrymandering, motivated by a desire to depress Labour support. As he realised later it backfired on the Conservatives.

Had the Conservatives noted what I wrote to the Yorkshire Post on January 22, 2022 they could have saved themselves some votes. I noted that lower turnouts generally favoured Labour. Requiring photo ID is a device that puts people off voting so the Conservatives lost out.

I am not a member of the Labour Party nor any other so I cannot comment on their motivation for lowering the voting age to 16. However, my own observations suggest many 16 and 17 year olds are well able to make sensible political decisions and cast a vote intelligently.

Mr Morley's dismissal of lowering the voting age as "ridiculous" echoes what many said when Labour dropped the voting age to 18 in time for the 1970 election. Curiously enough, Labour lost then so if the party understands history it seems unlikely lowering voting age will increase the number of Labour voters.

He makes an odd comparison with obtaining passports. Being able to vote is far more important than being able to go abroad. Given my hatred of Government IT systems I was agreeably surprised to find renewing my passport online was easy and far easier than obtaining photo ID for an election.