A Scottish council has apologised for what it described as a ‘lack of clarity’ after it told voters they required ID to vote.
Perth and Kinross Council tweeted that residents needed to take some form of identification to the polling booth in order to cast a vote.
The council was forced to delete the inaccurate tweet after followers on the social media website accused them of attempting to suppress voter turnout.
I think we can safely chalk this one up to malice rather than stupidity. Malice of the grossest, most profound kind. Malicious intent to suppress voting by those who cannot or do not have ID.
— Dr Rachel Ramsey (@DrRachelRamsey1) December 12, 2019
However, the tweet was not deleted as soon as the council was alerted and instead was left up until Wednesday night.
Voter surpression when the last election was such a small winning margin. This error was pointed out just after it was posted and it took emails to CEO and Twitter meltdown to make you move to remove it close to 11pm.
— Stand Free ???????????????????? (@SectionY2018) December 12, 2019
‘We apologise over the lack of clarity in a social media post regarding the production of ID in relation to voting in the general election,’ a council spokesperson said.
‘This error was brought to our attention within an hour of the post going up, and the council issued a correction at that point.
'The original tweet was taken down by the council on Wednesday night, twitter did not take it down.
‘We continued to message throughout the day reminding people of the need to vote and further advising them that neither ID nor polling cards are required to be shown to allow people to vote.’
