Have you seen the list of “photographic id” accepted for this election? I’m not at all surprised that votes struggle with picking the right document, and that poorly trained polling station personnel face issues with their validation:
https://www.gov.uk/how-to-vote/photo-id-youll-need
Especially these “Oyster 60+ card” and “disabled person’s bus pass” are ridiculous - I understand the idea behind it (these card subtypes likely require extra identity validation when being issued) but this is literally asking for trouble: people see “Oyster” but not realize only a very specific type of Oyster is accepted!
A side note: having lived in the UK since 2013 I have experienced all the madness of “fuzzy identity verification”, meaning 50 different ways of establishing your identity to a government office, bank, recruiter, rental agency etc. As any EU citizen I’m used to having a single identity card that is the primary legal identity document in all EU countries, which must be recognized by any government or commercial entity (e.g. bank). On elections you there’s just two types of documents accepted: id card or passport, and obviously they can’t be rejected at the polling station.
Therefore this mess, as many things in the UK, is 100% self-inflicted 🤷♂️