đź’ł âť“ Photo ID for Voting - good or bad

So keep seeing a Telegraph story being shared that the Tories have put in the Queens speech that we will need ID to vote. The recent pilots showed little evidence of a need for this and actually meant some people couldn’t vote. Some people keep spouting that Labour will lose votes as those dodgy foreigners have been doing electoral fraud.
Lots of people suggesting that we should therefore be given ID (this was rejected last time we voted on it). Pure and simple way to disenfranchise people and quite a US tactic.

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If you need ID to buy beer, then I don’t think it’s unreasonable to need ID for an election.

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I just don’t get what the issue is with ID cards

We have driving licence / passports etc

And what is the problem with showing photo Id to vote to prove you are who you say you are?

But you only need that for a short period of time. Some feel this is a bit big brothery. Not a NO2ID supporter back in the day?

I would think the number of people drinking illegally is far far more than voter fraud.

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Free ID cards would be an answer I could get behind though I see no need really. Why bother with voter ID? Fraud levels are tiny.
3.5 million people in the UK have NO photo ID with 11 million having neither passport nor driving licence.

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The “beauty” of FPTP is that fraud levels can be tiny and still be decisive.

This small?
“Out of 44.6 million votes cast in 2017, there was one conviction resulting from the 28 allegations of in-person voter fraud – that’s 0.000063%. Adding a major barrier to democratic engagement off the back of this would be a sledgehammer to crack a nut.”
How many people will be turned away at the polls?

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I’m going to take a wild and crazy stab in the dark here and suggest that the Government would not be pushing for voter ID if stats showed that it was traditional Tory voters that would likely be disproportionately disenfranchised.

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Is voter fraud really that low, or is our ability to detect it that bad?

I don’t know. No photo ID required for postal voting. I would have thought that this was more open to abuse. The evidence suggests that fraud is negligible at the polling booths so why change it?

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But the point I was making is that if you cannot detect the fraud in the first place, then the recorded instances of that fraud will be low or non existent.

Photo ID has to be a better option than rocking up with a piece of paper

Postal voting is wide open - not sure how you would fix this

So how about taking an empirical view on this? If it can be proved that the current system is open to high levels of fraudulent voting, then by all means look at everything that can be done to combat this. This may or may not include insisting on photo id at polling stations.

At present, there is no empirical proof of significant electoral fraud in this country. Simply wondering about whether or not it may be higher than we think is not a justification for introducing measures that might well narrow the franchise.

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I think in most other areas of criminality, people are happy to accept that the conviction rate does not match the scale of the problem.

It’s because in many cases, the crime is simply too difficult to try, be that because of lack of conclusive evidence or in some cases, no political will to do so at whatever level.

We also know that some of the biggest elections in the world, including the office of US President, were either flawed or fraudulent. I think back to Dubya’s election in 2000.

It doesn’t get followed up because it’s too much hassle.

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Sorry, thought this was developing into a good discussion so thought it merited it’s own thread…

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Personally I’m all for ID for Voting, I know it’s probably the first step into introducing an ID card but then I have not problem with that either.

Like @Goatboy said though they should make them free not charge a fortune for them.

Would you be able to use a driving license or something like that as ID?

IIRC when I was in France I had to have an ID carde (carte de sejour I think) and it didn’t cause me any problems.

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Sticky one for me this, it should be free to vote right? That is one of our rights, if you charge people for an ID card that is essentially having to pay to vote in a roundabout way which I don’t agree with, but even if they give them out free that will be taxpayers money so we will still be paying for it in a roundabout way and I don’t agree with that either, and if you don’t drive or don’t go abroad what other form of photo ID would be acceptable? :man_shrugging:

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It is a no from me you have a passport i had a drivingl icence that was valid until 2033 now its not and i have to pay for a new one every ten years or when i lose it .

Uhm

Never had an issue with ID cards… we are tracked much more easily by our phones and bank cards for it to have any civil liberty impact… but they should be FOC to ensure no one is disenfranchised

As for voter fraud, I would be more concerned with the the way Parties now use the various complex data algorithms to target shit at voters, often BA and lies designed to undermine the opposition…