Why is voter identification being made a requirement at some elections and what photo ID will polling stations accept? FactCheck takes a look.
From May 2023, people in England, Scotland and Wales will need to show photo ID to vote at polling stations in some elections.
From the same date, voters in Scotland will need to show photo ID at UK parliamentary by-elections and recall petitions, and in Wales at Police and Crime Commissioner elections, UK parliamentary by-election and recall petitions.In Northern Ireland, voters have been required to show ID since 1985, and photo ID since 2003.You will only need to show one form of ID, but it needs to be the original version and not a photocopy.
In August 2016, the then-government Anti-Corruption Champion, Lord Pickles, published a report on electoral fraud which highlighted the trust-based nature of polling station voting and recommended that the government should consider voter ID. The paper said the photo ID requirement is “widely acknowledged as an effective system for preventing electoral fraud” by ensuring that someone is who they say they are when voting, and therefore representing “the most straightforward and proportionate solution to the vulnerabilities in our elections”.
Prof Stanford said the new voter ID requirements are “certainly more strict than necessary to meet policy objectives and resemble the strictest laws seen in some US states”. Prof Stanford said given that an estimated two million UK adults currently lack the required photo ID to vote in polling stations, this is “quite an alarming statistic and suggests that hundreds of thousands of voters may be effectively disenfranchised”.
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