I have worked for my local authority for more than 40 years as polling station staff, but I refuse to ask voters for identity documents and so I have declined the appointment for the forthcoming local elections and future ones (Voter ID will disenfranchise poor and marginalised people. Our best defence? Talk about it, 18 April).
In all the elections I have worked at, I have never seen any attempts at voter fraud. We have proudly ensured that voters’ experience was a positive and welcoming one, and that they felt it was worth turning out to vote.
I regard the new voter ID legislation as a blatant attempt at voter suppression, and a shameful and unnecessary waste of public money. Voter fraud has never been an issue in UK elections, and the current arrangements simply ensure that less well-informed voters are deprived of their right to vote.
The money and effort would have been better spent ensuring that people were better informed about their democratic rights; maybe a better use of draconian measures would be to make voting compulsory, as is the case in countries such as Belgium and Australia.
This Trumpian measure panders to a small group of ill-informed people, and I can only assume that this government hopes to gain an electoral advantage. I hope that a future government will repeal it.
Marion Cullen
Sibson, Leicestershire
• This will be the first year that everyone is required to bring a form of photo ID to cast their vote in the polling station, following government trials during the 2019 elections. RNIB research shows that as many as 40,000 blind and partially sighted people do not currently have one of the accepted forms of photo ID, including travel passes. This could put them at risk of being turned away from the polling station if they are unaware of the new requirement and have not applied for the free voter ID document.
We’re concerned that blind and partially sighted people might not know about the new voter ID requirement until it’s too late. During the government’s voter ID trials in 2019, we know of at least one person with sight loss who was turned away from the polling station for not having the required ID. We’re extremely concerned that this could happen to many more blind and partially sighted people at the upcoming May elections.
Mike Wordingham
Policy manager, RNIB
• Gaby Hinsliff’s article on the problems caused by voter ID does a good job of identifying one of the current issues that Labour’s attack adverts should have focused on.
Rather than making tenuous connections to Rishi Sunak’s personal accountability for decisions made by his predecessors, they should be pursuing him for having supported heavy-handed legislation that is neither necessary nor, it seems, workable – but will have the desired effect of preventing some people from casting their votes.
Les Bright
Exeter
• I am nearly 80 and, like Maureen Oxley (Letters, 18 April), I have voted in every election, bar three years when abroad. I think the new legislation on voter ID is ridiculous, and calculated to disenfranchise younger voters, but I’ll definitely vote on 4 May, producing my “old git’s bus pass”. I’m leaving the driving licence at home.
Lynn Wiseman
Lewes, East Sussex
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