When the polling card for this May’s local elections arrived, as usual I stuck it on the fridge absent-mindedly without looking. It was only when it fell off the fridge at the weekend that, in picking it up, I noticed the small print about bringing photo ID to vote for the first time this year.
Like countless other married women, I live a double life. I kept my maiden name for work and assorted official purposes, but use my married name for the personal stuff: school runs, doctor’s appointments, taking the dog to the vet. Having two identities feels like a useful marker of where “work me” clocks off and the private one takes over, but administratively speaking … well, let’s not mention the time my husband booked a surprise weekend abroad, and I unromantically pointed out en route to Heathrow that my ticket was in the wrong name.
My passport and driving licence both belong to work me. Unfortunately, it was private me who filled out the electoral register. According to the Electoral Commission, the fact that my acceptable photo ID is in the wrong name won’t matter just so long as I also bring my wedding certificate to the polling booth, which would be great if I could actually find my wedding certificate. But as things stand, I have until 5pm on Tuesday 25 April to dredge up a passport-style photo and apply for what’s called a voter authority certificate designed for the identity-less, or until 23:59 on Monday 17 April (apologies if you’re reading this in a sweat) to change the name under which I’m registered to vote. This is, I should add, only a concern for voters in Great Britain; voter ID is a long-established part of the process in Northern Ireland.
Compulsory voter ID isn’t a dealbreaker, of course, for anyone strongly motivated to vote who can either afford to have a passport and driving licence or is confident dealing with officialdom, and is lucky not to live a life so grindingly tough that they just have no bandwidth left for such things. Although even then, it helps to know that voter ID is actually coming in – surveys suggest that a quarter of people don’t know – and to have the idea that May equals elections engraved on your cold, journalistic heart.
But plenty of people don’t fit these neat boxes, which is why organisations including the Electoral Reform Society and the anti-poverty campaigner the Joseph Rowntree Foundation warned that voter ID laws passed last year would disfranchise poor and marginalised people and those consumed by the struggle just to get by. Joining those, I suspect, will be some who simply won’t realise they were affected until they’re being politely turned away from polling booths.
With the honourable exception of the 60-year-old managing director of South Norfolk council, who has gamely produced a rap-style voter ID video so endearingly naff it may well go viral by accident, there has been worryingly little publicity despite this election being a crucial chance to get everyone used to the changes before next year’s general election.
In the US, voter ID laws are associated with accusations of voter suppression, or deliberately rigging things to deter young, black, and low-income voters, who are most likely to lean Democrat, from turning out. Some suspect the Tories of something similar here, given that the incidence of electoral fraud is so small (one caution for an offence last year, plus one case in which court proceedings have started) as to make this sledgehammer a dangerously crude way to crack a nut.
But Britain isn’t the US, and there may be important nuances here. Research commissioned by the government – which found 91% of Britons own approved photo ID that is both still in date and looks recognisably like them – shows that under-29s are actually the age group most likely to own something suitable, and ethnic minorities are marginally more likely to do so than white Britons.
Those at greatest risk of disenfranchisement are, however, disproportionately likely to be unemployed, disabled or lacking educational qualifications, and those who have never voted before. The additional caveat, meanwhile, is that owning a passport or driving licence or over-60s bus pass (the full list of eligible ID is on the back of your polling card) isn’t the same as knowing you’re supposed to bring it with you to the polling booth. Critically, more than a quarter of those without ID said the change would make them less likely to vote.
Having watched years of speakers at Conservative party conference fringe meetings waxing indignant about electoral fraud scandals in Tower Hamlets, before huffing that a bit of extra paperwork is hardly a big ask in the circumstances, I suspect Tory support for this has less to do with naked skulduggery than with a basic lack of imagination. If everybody you know drives and holidays abroad every year, while having plenty of time and energy left over for tedious admin, you may well wonder what the problem is. But behavioural science and common sense both indicate that if governments really want people to do something, they should make it easier, not harder.
To introduce a new hurdle, like voter ID, is effectively to treat those who will lose out as acceptable collateral damage. This is precisely the sort of general political ethos, obviously, that many Guardian readers will want to vote against. But until then, if you know anyone you think may be at risk of missing out, from octogenarians who haven’t been abroad in years to disorganised 18-year-olds and anyone in between, then nudge them. You may be the only person who does.
• Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
