Why voter ID laws are a waste of time and taxpayers' money
It was recently announced that voter identity checks, where voters must present a valid form of identification (e.g. passport, driving licence) will be trialled in five council areas at the next local elections in England. The five areas for this trial are Watford, Bromley, Gosport, Woking, and Slough; only one of these areas (Slough) has a substantial proportion of Asian voters, the ethnic group where postal vote fraud has been repeatedly cited to be most prevalent, as infamously seen in Birmingham and Bradford.
The reality is that ID checks are in fact a waste of time, taxpayers' money and effort for three important reasons:
1. They will not be effective in preventing electoral fraud. Impersonation of voters can already be stopped by checking polling cards (as only one is issued per voter per address) as each voter comes through the polling station. ID checks cannot reliably prevent cases of 'double voting' by students registered at a university address and a home address, since registered voter databases are localised and not centralised and different polling clerks from different councils have no regular communication with each other; electronic voting is needed to prevent this particular problem. The most common type of electoral fraud is of course done by postal voting, which polling station ID checks cannot prevent as postal votes must be sent in long before polling day. In any case, ID has to be presented before a postal vote is given to fill in in the first place.
2. They will just be a burden for everyone-voters, staff and administrators alike. Checks are reasonably rigorous at polling stations regarding voting anyway-and registering to vote (online and offline) requires some proof anyway, usually a National Insurance number. Requiring polling staff to perform extra checks when there are already sufficient checks in place makes no sense, and requiring voters to always bring ID when they can just bring their polling card for certainty is not particularly fair or justified.
3. Voter ID laws have already shown to be ineffective-they just disenfranchise poorer communities. Similar experiments in the USA have only disenfranchised some vulnerable and poorer voters who are less likely than average to hold a passport, driving licence, or other form of official identification. They have done nothing to curb more sophisticated methods of voter fraud nor have they made elections better in any way.
These trials should be aborted, and regulations on postal voting should instead be reviewed and revised-most electoral fraud occurs outside the polling station.
The reality is that ID checks are in fact a waste of time, taxpayers' money and effort for three important reasons:
1. They will not be effective in preventing electoral fraud. Impersonation of voters can already be stopped by checking polling cards (as only one is issued per voter per address) as each voter comes through the polling station. ID checks cannot reliably prevent cases of 'double voting' by students registered at a university address and a home address, since registered voter databases are localised and not centralised and different polling clerks from different councils have no regular communication with each other; electronic voting is needed to prevent this particular problem. The most common type of electoral fraud is of course done by postal voting, which polling station ID checks cannot prevent as postal votes must be sent in long before polling day. In any case, ID has to be presented before a postal vote is given to fill in in the first place.
2. They will just be a burden for everyone-voters, staff and administrators alike. Checks are reasonably rigorous at polling stations regarding voting anyway-and registering to vote (online and offline) requires some proof anyway, usually a National Insurance number. Requiring polling staff to perform extra checks when there are already sufficient checks in place makes no sense, and requiring voters to always bring ID when they can just bring their polling card for certainty is not particularly fair or justified.
3. Voter ID laws have already shown to be ineffective-they just disenfranchise poorer communities. Similar experiments in the USA have only disenfranchised some vulnerable and poorer voters who are less likely than average to hold a passport, driving licence, or other form of official identification. They have done nothing to curb more sophisticated methods of voter fraud nor have they made elections better in any way.
These trials should be aborted, and regulations on postal voting should instead be reviewed and revised-most electoral fraud occurs outside the polling station.
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