Various reports have been coming in about the impact of Voter ID on the polls.
The first thing to say is that almost all voters got the message and turned up with correct ID. But some didn’t, and that is worrying. Worse still we don’t actually know how many people were turned away in some council areas.
I was telling yesterday in Elmbridge and the council had employed one extra polling clerk at each polling station this time. Their job was to greet voters outside as they arrived, check they had suitable ID and then point them in the right direction. That may sound a sensible idea until you realise one thing. If a voter went inside the polling station without ID then this was recorded by the polling staff; if they then returned with the correct ID and voted then that was, of course, recorded too. So it should be possible to find out how many people were turned away for lack of ID and how many of those returned later to vote. But where a greeter was employed there was no record of how many were turned away since they didn’t actually enter the polling station.
So I am bound to ask, why did the Council employ this tactic and who paid for the extra staff ? Were they just being kind hearted, unaware of the way it would supress data on those who were turned away? Or were Heads of Democratic Services advised to do this by a higher power?
The BBC has this: Voters express anger at ID rule changes. It includes a case where an immuno-supressed woman was unable to vote because she was not prepared to remove her mask for identification purposes.
Tom Brake, the former Lib Dem MP, is now the director of the Unlock Democracy, which has been campaigning against Voter ID. He is referred to in the BBC post:
(Tom Brake) said his organisation had been tracking social media throughout the day, and that it was clear that a “significant number of people didn’t know about the need for voter ID”.
There has long been a suspicion that Voter ID is being used to supress votes, as has happened quite spectacularly in the US. Some people, of course, just forget to bring ID, but the worry is that some eligible voters may not actually have any suitable photographic ID – these are likely to be people on low incomes or without English as their first language.
And on top of that the policy has been introduced as a solution to a problem that does not exist. A Tory teller sitting with me told me that there was widespread voter fraud – which is simply not true. But the myth persists. The Electoral Commission reports:
In the past 5 years, there is no evidence of large-scale electoral fraud.
Of the 1,386 cases of alleged electoral fraud reported to police between 2018 and 2022, 9 led to convictions and the police issued 6 cautions.
Most cases either resulted in the police taking no further action or were locally resolved by the police issuing words of advice.
Even that is a bit misleading. It seems only around 20% of those reported frauds were committed by voters. The rest related to incorrect or missing imprints on election leaflets or misleading claims, or other campaigning tactics by candidates. So we are talking about 70 cases of voter fraud per year. In comparison how many people lost their vote yesterday because they didn’t bring the correct ID? Sadly, we will never know, although the Electoral Commission have promised a review.
* Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.
Follow @LibDemVoice on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
No Hiding Place (1963): The joys of live television drama
Elon Musk becomes even more unpopular with Brits
How to lose weight and keep it lost.
January
Weekly Road Report - West End Ward #dundeewestend
Will Reeves be forced to break her own fiscal rules?
Cassie
Peter Davies
Mohammed Amin
9 Comments
Mary. It’s simply not true that voter fraud does not exist. Every year, tendered ballot papers are issued, especially in big cities. For the uninitiated, a tendered (pink) ballot paper is issued if a voter goes to vote and finds out s/he is already down as having voted. The tendered ballot paper is kept separate from the other ballot papers and only counted if the result is challenged in an electoral court. Very often, but not always, this means that there was personation and someone else pretended to be the voter and voted in their place. I have witnessed personation, and not just in Northern Ireland, where it used to be widespread.
My problem is not with voter ID itself. Every other country in Europe has that requirement and Northern Ireland has had it for years. It is with what is accepted as ID in a country that does not have identity cards and has no tradition of being asked to produce ID in most things one does. It really is beyond absurd that a police warrant card and an NHS ID are not acceptable.
I do think there is fraud in elections based on my own experience. What is necessary is for the government to make sure everyone who needs voter ID has it and THAT we cannot expect from the Tories. I do not think that Labour would repeal this legislation if they came to power by the way.
@Mick Taylor I did not claim that voter fraud does not exist, only that widespread voter fraud was a myth. But it was the myth that was used to justify the introduction of Voter ID. The question obviously is whether this was taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
Electoral fraud does exist but the campaign and education to prepare people for these local elections needed to be better from the government. In London we didn’t have local elections but the government/local authorities would have some information on minority languages spoken in areas where voting took place for translating this information. As for voter suppression, well voter ID certainly did not stop people voting for other parties as alleged; with the Lib Dems, Labour and Greens, unfortunately, doing well and picking up seats from the Conservatives.
At my last local elections I might have easily got away with voting twice after changing my plans having received a postal vote then not going away but of course I didn’t. Here is an example of voter fraud from years back but there have been numerous cases since in areas like Tower Hamlets for example – https://www.theguardian.com/society/2001/mar/10/localgovernment
@Jason Connor
Indeed voter fraud exists but the majority of convictions relate to postal vote fraud ratther than personation. And the link you quoted relates specifically to proxy voting.
Note https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/voters-id-election-polling-b2331700.html i- in particular:
“Former cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg said: “Polling staff should be sensible and flexible. Personation is very rare and I would have thought even less likely with an expired passport of whatever vintage.””
An admission from a tory MP that personation is very rare.
“And on top of that the policy has been introduced as a solution to a problem that does not exist.”
Part A: what if the next general election sees the BNP win due to mass voter fraud. Would there be some system to overturn the result? If there is significant risk that our elections are vulnerable to voter fraud, then introducing policy to counter that makes sense even if there isn’t historical evidence of fraud happening.
Part B: does voter ID really reduce risk of voter fraud or does it just make it more difficult for certain groups?
Part C: will it be policed? Will it be policed equally in every area? If Ed Davey turned up without ID and tried to vote after a young minority with no ID, would they both be turned away?
Do we know what the turn out was today and how it compares with previous years?
@Jason Connor
Having a postal vote does not enable you to vote twice. If the council has provided you with a postal vote, your name is crossed out and marked with “A” (for absent voter) on the register to be used at the polling station.
What we don’t know is how many people decided not to vote because of voter ID. This wll be reflected in turnout though obviously we don’t know what turnout would have been without it. This would require some sort of random polling perhaps associated with the regular stuff. Those who were effected by voter ID should be added to those not voting for other reasons and those not registered. Turnouts are only of those registered so with turnouts in the thirties this is hardly a legitimate set of elections.
There were definitely people who at least claimed to be refusing to vote on the principle of not agreeing with the ID policy – I knocked on the door of one man who refused to go and didn’t think people should need ID to vote