The Observer view on the government’s pointless voter ID scheme
Combating voter fraud is a worthy objective. And that is what the government says it is doing by requiring all voters to show photo ID before being allowed to cast their ballot in person from May. Ministers would have us believe this is a landmark reform that will prevent fraudsters from posing as other people in order to cast votes on their behalf.
But voter ID has been described by a wide range of opponents, including election experts, local government representatives and charities representing disenfranchised groups, as a solution in search of a problem, or, in the words of the Electoral Reform Society, “a sledgehammer to crack a nut”. There is very little evidence to suggest that in-person voter fraud is anything other than a minuscule problem. But the introduction of photo ID for all voters in a country without a universal form of photo ID risks disenfranchising significant numbers of the electorate, especially when it has been rushed through without reasonable time to make the transition.
Several factors make it very difficult to commit in-person electoral fraud. In recent years, there have been fewer than 50 allegations a year of personation – the crime in which someone pretends to be someone else in order to cast their vote – out of tens of millions of votes cast; in the years 2010-2018, there were just two convictions. The Electoral Reform Society concludes it is an incredibly rare crime because committing it on the scale needed to actually change the result of an election would “require levels of organisation that would be easy to spot and prevent”. Other types of electoral fraud, such as postal voting scams, have been a bigger issue and there has been crossparty support for reforms to reduce it in recent years.
Yet the government’s measures to combat in-person fraud risk disenfranchising people. Countries that require people to show voter ID in order to vote generally have a mandatory form of photo ID for all citizens. Research commissioned by the government has highlighted that 4% of all voters do not have a form of photo ID with a recognisable photo. That is the equivalent of 2.1 million people.
Since January, these people have been able to apply for a new free voter document, the voter authority certificate. But this adds an extra bureaucratic layer to voting that is likely to put people off altogether. Fewer than 21,000 people have applied for these certificates since the scheme opened just over a month ago, a tiny fraction of those thought to lack the photo ID they need. This has led to the Conservative chair of the Local Government Association warning this weekend that electoral officials risk being “overwhelmed” by complaints by people who find they are unable to vote in the local elections on 4 May, the first set of elections where voters will need to show photo ID to vote. The government ran two voter ID pilots in 2018 and 2019, which they claim show the risks of excluding voters are minimal, but the Electoral Commission concluded it could not draw “definitive conclusions” about these risks. While voter ID has been used in Northern Ireland in recent decades, this was introduced to tackle a real problem with in-person electoral fraud in the 1980s and the impact this had on public confidence in voting.
Why is the Conservative government rushing through these reforms – without even a transition period when people are allowed to vote without photo ID but told that in future they will need to bring it with them? Such a change needs to be phased in gradually with a sustained public communications effort to ensure people do not turn up to vote without a form of ID, are told they cannot vote and do not return even if they do have an acceptable form of ID at home.
The lack of evidence that voter ID is an appropriate solution to a significant problem has left ministers vulnerable to the charge that they are motivated instead by the potential electoral advantage these reforms might confer to the Conservative party. Charities have warned that particular groups are more likely to be disenfranchised: just 53% of black Britons hold a driving licence, compared with 76% of white Britons, and Mencap has highlighted that people with a learning disability are less likely to have a passport. Civil rights group Liberty has also highlighted that younger people – less likely to vote Conservative – are much less likely to have a valid form of photo ID. This is particularly true given that the government has allowed more forms of photo ID that are relevant for older groups than for young people – for example, concessionary transport passes will be accepted, but not youth travel photocards or university IDs.
Public confidence in the running of elections is rightly high in the UK. Voter ID risks undermining that if people showing up to vote in May, as they always have done, are told they cannot because they do not have the right ID. Governments should not mess with the voting process unless there is strong evidence their proposals improve the integrity of elections without disenfranchising large groups of voters. These reforms fail this test.
Fewer than 21,000 people have applied for these certificates since the scheme opened just over a month ago