Voter ID

We shouldn't risk these new rules in the general elelction

The government must cancel their expensive plans to make voting harder Sign the petition

Evidence from around the world shows that forcing voters to bring photographic ID to the polling station just makes it harder for people to vote – while doing little to increase faith in the integrity of the system. The Government think their scheme could cost up to £180,000,000 a decade. We don’t need to spend millions to put up barriers to people taking part in our democracy.

A barrier to democracy – for some

There’s evidence that strict voter ID rules in the USA disproportionately disadvantage already marginalised groups. Why? Unlike in mainland Europe where everyone has a mandatory national ID card, in the UK and USA the richer you are the more likely you have ID. Many citizens who can’t afford to go on foreign holidays don’t have passports, and those that can’t drive don’t have driving licences.

Research shows that more disadvantaged groups are less likely to have ID. The government’s own commissioned research found that those with severely limiting disabilities, the unemployed, people without qualifications, and those who had never voted before were all less likely to hold any form of photo ID.

Here in the UK,  millions of people lack the strictest forms of photo ID, such as a passport or driving licence. Government-commissioned research found that 2% of people don’t have any form of photo ID (including expired or unrecognisable) and 4% don’t have recognisable ID (roughly 2.1 million people) – making mandatory voter ID a barrier to many people exercising their right to vote.

An expensive distraction

It’s not just those without ID that will have to pay up. The government’s own figures suggest the scheme will cost up to £180,000,000 extra a decade.

We’ll all pay – and for what? Making it slower to vote – as poll workers try to match passports with ten-year-old photos to their owners and driving licences that are still in voters’ maiden names. Should already over-stretched local council workers be able to turn people away from polling stations due to bureaucratic errors?

UK elections are safe and secure

Voting is safe and secure in Britain, and public confidence in the running of elections is the highest since 2012. According to the Electoral Commission’s latest tracker of public opinion, 80 percent of people are confident that elections are well run, 87 percent said voting in general is safe from fraud and abuse, and 90 percent that voting at the polling station is safe.

We need to be combatting the huge challenges that undermine our democracy, not putting up paywalls around polling stations.

Nine million people are missing from the electoral roll and there are glaring loopholes in our campaign rules. However, the government needs to think very carefully before using an extremely blunt instrument to deal with a complex and varied issue.

So while voter ID might sound like an easy option, raising barriers to voting is rarely something to be welcomed, particularly in our already less-than-perfect democracy.

Our well run elections

Elections are generally very well run in the UK – there are extremely low levels of electoral fraud and people have high confidence in voting. In 2019, the last general election year, there were only 33 allegations of impersonation at the polling station, out of over 58 million votes cast. Adding a major barrier to democratic engagement off the back of so few proven cases would be a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

 

Why is impersonation so rare?

Requirements to show ID at polling stations would only stop people pretending to be somebody else in order to cast one fake vote. This is an incredibly rare crime because it is such a slow, clunky way to steal an election – and requires levels of organisation that would be easy to spot and prevent.

Firstly, without knowing the result, you can’t work out how many hundreds or thousands of votes you need to steal: if you steal too many it will be obvious, but if you don’t steal enough it makes no difference at all.

Secondly, you need to find enough real people on the electoral register who won’t be casting their ballot. If anyone whose vote has been stolen tries to vote, it instantly reveals the fraud and investigations begin.

Thirdly, you would need a team to go around all the polling stations to cast hundreds or thousands of votes without being spotted going in the same one twice.

Voting is not like picking up a parcel from the post office. Each individual vote only has any value when thousands of others are cast the same way – and it’s simply impractical, with a functioning rule of law and low levels of corruption, to steal enough votes to make a tangible difference.

What about Northern Ireland's scheme?

Faced with extremely high levels of documented in-person electoral fraud, Northern Ireland introduced mandatory ID in 1985 and a free Electoral ID Card in 2002.

At the 1983 General Election, 949 people arrived at polling stations in Northern Ireland only to be told a vote has already been cast in their name and police made 149 arrests for personation, resulting in 104 prosecutions.

Investing millions in the ID scheme was therefore a proportionate response to the significant problem of personation.

But Northern Ireland did not introduce photo ID straightaway – elections took place for almost 20 years with a less stringent ID requirement. It is only since 2003 that voters in Northern Ireland have had to show photo ID at the polling station.

Don't you need ID to vote in Europe?

Nearly all European countries have mandatory ID card schemes with either free or low-cost cards. As ID cards are mandatory in most countries, all voters have ID cards, so no groups of voters are discriminated against.

In the UK we do not have mandatory ID cards and certain groups are far less likely to have ID than others. The elderly and those on low income are less likely to drive or go on holidays abroad for instance.

In the 2011 Census, 9.5 million people stated they did not hold a passport, 9 million do not have a driving licence and research estimates that in 2019 1.3 million lack even a bank account.

What happened at the trials?

The government trialled mandatory ID at the 2018 and 2019 English local elections. In both years, participating councils required voters to bring a form of identification, with each area testing different restrictions.

In total, across both sets of pilots, over 1,000 did not return to vote after being refused a ballot for not having voter ID. This scheme risks disenfranchising far more people than suspected wrongdoers.

Dodgy statistics

One of the key pieces of evidence used to support the need for the Government’s voter ID pilots was discredited by the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) in the run-up to the 2018 vote. The government claimed that in-person voter fraud more than doubled between 2014 and 2016. While the statistic is technically accurate – a rise from 21 cases in 2014 to 44 in 2016 – the Cabinet Office failed to mention that the number of allegations then fell by more than a third in 2017, to 28.

Locations of trials

According to the 2011 census, the elderly, people from ethnic minority backgrounds and less well-off are least likely to hold forms of photo ID. Yet, none of the trial areas in 2018 had a significantly older, poorer or ethnically diverse population than the national average. The people most likely to be excluded by voter ID simply didn’t live in the areas voter ID was tested.

The government must cancel their expensive plans to make voting harder

According to the government's own numbers, forcing people to bring photo ID could cost up to £20,000,000 per election.

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More information about Voter ID

Publications

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Briefings

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Date published
12/01/22
Submission for

Briefing on the Elections Bill – Report stage

Type
Voter ID
Date published
06/09/21
Submission for

Briefing on the Elections Bill – Second Reading

Type
Voter ID