Voter ID

With the local elections coming today I wanted to cover the new voter ID requirements that will be in effect for the first time. Britain was an outlier in not needing ID in order to vote but was this a bad opening us up to fraud or were we better off without it? Since we are doing it now how do we ensure we are doing it correctly?

What’s the problem?

The new voter ID bill, introduced in 2021 made a case for requiring voter ID at polling stations in order to prevent impersonation, i.e. a person pretending to be someone else and casting a vote they have no right to. It cited a report outlining hundreds of cases of electoral offences between 2010 and 2018, peaking with 518 in 2015.

However, this was a disingenuous attempt to make the problem seem bigger than it was. Firstly the number stated here are allegations, not police cautions and not convictions. Secondly these are all crimes related to elections. Yes they include impersonations, but they far more likely to be campaign violations, where a campaign does not make it clear that their materials are part of a political campaign. In elections from 2014 to 2019 there was a grand total of 171 allegations of impersonation, resulting in 9 police cautions and 3(3!) convictions.

Proponents of the bill will likely say that the number is much larger, and we simply don’t catch them. This argument does not support a voter ID bill, it supports a bill to investigate the number of impersonations. Without any further evidence I will apply Hitchens Razor “what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence”.

It can’t hurt though? Right? Right…?

Even if fraud we rampant most reasonable people would agree that the cure cannot be worse than the disease. If we we seeing 1,000 cases of voter fraud per year any solution certainly shouldn’t supress more than 1,000 genuine votes as a side effect or else the net effect is less democracy. I woudl argue this point further and say that the state has a greater responsibility to not do harm that individul citizens and so any measure should supress significantly fewer genuine votes that the number of fraudulent votes it presents. how does this law do on this test? in a word … abysmally. The electoral commission has stated that they estimate the number of voters without valid voter ID to be around 3.5 million. Remember this is in aid of preventing around 1 case of impersonation per year. 3.5 million people who, currently, cannot make their voces heard within our democracy under this law. It turns out having this requirement, it can hurt, a lot.

So why is the government doing this?

Given that the voter ID law seem to be a solution without a problem what is the purpose of it? The first place to look is in the ID’s that are valid under the new law. As you would expect passports, drivers licences, and other government Photo ID are valid. Some travel cards are also valid but crucially these are only older persons or disabled persons travel cards. The 60+ oyster card is valid photo ID but a young person or student oyster card is not, despite containing the same information and being issued by the same authority. Additionally expired ID is valid so long as you are still recognisable. Older forms of ID may not be secure and may be more easily forged than “weaker” forms of ID such as student ID’s but the law permits them.

So who is left out? Who doesn’t have on of the recognized forms of ID? As mentioned above, the Electoral commission estimates around 3.5 million people do not have valid ID and they have elaborated that this group is disproportionately made up of Women, under 20’s, and people living in urban areas. These are 3 demographics who are less likely to vote conservative (under 20’s vote Tory less than half as much as the UK Average, women 4% less than men and urban 10% less than rural).

“but you can apply for a free voter ID card” you can. The bill does have a provision for getting a voter ID card but you can’t just get one, you have to be on the electoral roll at your current address. This is another hurdle to voting and disproportionately affects those who move frequently, ie the young & poor.

Overall, it is clear that the law has been crafted to disenfranchise voters of demographics which tend not to vote conservative.

Where does this lead?

The authors of this bill did not come up with it on their own. This is a very common tactic in the United States where republicans have been supressing voter power in unfavourable demographics for decades. If the Conservative party continues on this path they will probably try the following:

1.       Take over the process of redrawing electoral boundaries to Gerrymander districts. This involves “Packing” some districts with Labour or LibDem voters giving them an overwhelming majority in those districts while “Cracking” other opposition districts and merging them with several very safe tory sets to create a larger number of moderately tory seats. In theory, in a two party system this could allow a party to govern with only 26% of public support.

2.       Soft disenfranchisement techniques like, lowering the standards of staffing in polling stations, few polling stations, shorter hours. This causes people to wait longer or take time off work in order to vote resulting in some people turning away before they can cast their vote

3.       Add further conditions on being able to vote, preventing former prisoners and “non-Native” citizens from being able to vote is a classic example of this.

What can we do about it?

In simple terms, make your voice heard: in town halls, in MP’s surgeries, in protests, in emails and most of all at the ballot box. Groups such as the electoral reform society are engaged in this work and supporting them may get this repealed.

But what if we wanted to properly safeguard a right to vote? Whilst people choose whether or not to vote any scheme like this will be met with a response that those that “really” want to vote will vote, as if those are the only real votes that matter somehow. I have participated in campagingin during 2 general elections and most of the energy is not spent on winning people over it is spent in getting the people you have won over to the ballot box. I think that a valid government is one that has wonover the people not one that has simply rouse more people out of apathy.

To do this we could move to the position that Australia maintains, that you have to return your ballot. You don’t have to vote, you could spoil the ballot, but if you are eligible to vote and you don’t return the ballot you get a $50 fine (£25), this is not much but it’s a simple encouragement to vote. If we, as a country, make a statement on the importance of everyone voting by enforcing mandatory voting then any attempt to remove that right will be a jarring contrast and may wake us up to the fact that out ruling party is trying to place a thumb on the scale to stay in power, regardless of the will of the people.