Boris Johnson, who himself imposed the demand for proper identification when serving as prime minister, was turned away from a polling place on Thursday when he attempted to cast a ballot.

According to Sky News, Johnson tried to cast his vote in the election for a police and crime commissioner in South Oxfordshire, but was first denied entry for not having the proper identification.

Johnson was turned away at the first attempt, according to a spokeswoman who was contacted by POLITICO, but he was able to cast his ballot.

During his tenure as prime minister in 2022, Johnson introduced the Elections Act. Voters are required by law to present a picture ID in order to cast a ballot.

Advocacy organizations and the main election watchdog in the United Kingdom, the Electoral Commission, denounced the regulations, claiming they may exclude hundreds of thousands of voters from casting ballots in a subsequent general election.

Furthermore, the watchdog stated that those individuals are more likely to be handicapped, from minority ethnic origins, and to be impoverished. Additionally, they are less inclined to support Johnson's Conservative Party.

When the next general election in the United Kingdom takes place later this year, the regulations most likely won't change. The law's disenfranchisement effect would probably be more pronounced in a general election, according to the Electoral Commission.

As a member of the government that imposed the restriction, Johnson's fellow Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg acknowledged in 2023 that the regulations had been an attempt to "gerrymander" future elections for the Conservative Party, but that it had failed because older voters, who are more likely to support the party, 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.”

Johnson could be advocating for a higher pension age, but he can't really say he was unaware of the changes.