CAMPAIGNERS have warned concerns over voter ID may not be resolved when Scotland experiences the new requirement for the first time in a “high-stakes” General Election.
The Tories’ new laws on requiring certain forms of photographic identification to cast a ballot will be tested at the local elections in England this week.
Voters who do not have the correct document – such as a driving licence, passport, blue badge or free voter authority certificate – will be turned away from polling stations.
Critics say the change is not needed with only a tiny number of voter fraud cases and that it risks deterring people from going to the ballot box.
There are also concerns that the impact of the new policy on the elections taking place in England on Thursday will not be properly assessed.
In the run-up to polling day, only around 80,000 online applications were submitted for a voter authority certificate, which can be used by those who don’t have an acceptable form of photo ID.
Jess Garland, director of policy and research at the Electoral Reform Society, said: “This is the sort of thing we were warning about all along, as the numbers of people who don’t have the types of ID being asked for is really high – 2.1 million across the whole of the country.
“The Electoral Commission last week produced some figures on public awareness, which showed around a quarter of people in the areas with elections weren’t aware of the change.
“So we are also worried that as well as people not having the ID they need, there could be a lot of people who just don’t know they need it on the day and end up accidentally disenfranchised as they don’t have their ID on them.”
In the Commons last week, Tory minister Rachel Maclean was questioned by MPs over the policy, including how the number of voters turned away from polling stations because of a lack of ID would be monitored.
SNP MP Kirsty Blackman said: “We in the SNP have consistently raised our opposition to voter ID, because it disproportionately disenfranchises vulnerable and under-represented groups such as disabled people, young people, trans and non-binary people, and those from ethnic minority backgrounds.
“Given that local councils, this place and politicians at all levels are disproportionately white, non-disabled, older and non-trans, what assessment have the Government made of the impact that requiring voter ID will have on the representativeness of democracy in these isles?”
Maclean responded: “Research has demonstrated that 99% of black and ethnic minority communities already possess a form of voter ID that is perfectly appropriate for voting.
“It is also the case that some ethnic communities are more disadvantaged by abuses at the ballot box, which is why we will always fight for all people in our United Kingdom to have trust and confidence in the sanctity of our electoral processes.”
Maclean also told MPs that “data on people who are turned away and who later return to the polling station with accepted ID will be recorded by a polling clerk or a presiding officer at the issuing desk”.
But Garland said: “The process is if someone comes to a polling station, gets to the front of the queue, gets to the desk and doesn’t have the ID then that person will be recorded [whether they] subsequently come back with ID or not.
“But the practicality of this is that can you imagine someone walking up to a polling station seeing a big sign saying do you have ID, you need ID to vote – then queuing up to tell someone that you don’t have their ID?
“So that might capture some people, but there is a real chance people are going to walk away and not be captured in the official data.”
“The other thing is they are not going to collect any demographic data, so we won’t know if this is particularly affecting young people, if it is affecting certain minority ethnic groups, there is a lot of that information which we won’t know.”
She added: “There is a whole range of concerns that we were warning about back when the legislation was going through.
“For voters in Scotland, they are going to be experiencing this for the first time at a high-stakes General Election, and we don’t want to see all these problems repeated.”
Garland also argued the requirement for voter ID was “not a proportionate response” to the issue of election fraud.
“In 2019, we had European Parliament elections, local elections, the General Election – with 58 million votes cast. There was one conviction for impersonation fraud,” she said.
“It’s an enormous upheaval and change to the way we do elections and just no evidence to suggest it is necessary. It is such a risk to free and fair elections.
“I can’t understand why you would be making going to vote harder, when we should be thinking about ways to improve turnout and making it easier for people to go and cast their vote.”
Last week, an English Tory branch came under fire for distributing leaflets which claimed no ID was needed in order to vote.
Chair of the Norwich Conservatives Simon Jones described it as a “dreadful mistake” and said the material had not been updated.
