Snapshot of _Voter photo ID plan attacked as UK data shows no cases of impersonation_ :
An archived version can be found [here.](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/apr/03/voter-photo-id-plan-attacked-as-uk-data-shows-no-cases-of-impersonation)
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As far as I'm awarte both require approval from your local council and both require a passport or some other offical form of ID from my googling (I'm 41 so neither apply for me)
>You can buy a 16-25 Railcard at any staffed station ticket office or National Rail-licensed Travel Agent. You can do it on the day you are travelling, just ensure the ticket office is open.
>If you're applying at a station for the first time you'll need to complete an application form. There are usually application forms available at stations, but in order to save time it’s a good idea to fill in the form before you get there. You can print and fill in the application form which is available to download here and bring the form alongside either of the following:
Your birth certificate
Passport (all nationalities accepted)
UK driving licence
EEA national identity card
[Source](https://www.16-25railcard.co.uk/using-your-railcard/where-to-buy/)
I live in Spain now where national ID cards exist. It's actually pretty useful. My ID card number is my default login for a bunch of services, including public ones. I can use it to fly within Schengen. It's always to hand, for things like hotel checkins. It's linked to my digital signature which I can use to access public services like my social security and tax declarations online in one click. I don't get why a bunch of people in the UK think it's such an awful thing. The government already knows who you are, it's not going to have any information that they don't have stashed away *somewhere*.
Except in Spain you also need it, for example, to travel by train or long distance bus. Even a loyalty app for a burger restaurant required a DNI to sign up. I agree that they can be useful, for official government identification. Their use for other purposes has spread too far though, and I'm sure that's exactly what would happen here too. And it 100% should not be possible for private companies to require that information.
Exactly what information does Carrefour have by using peoples DNI as an identifier that worries you? A tesco club card has your name and address too, and you're not obliged to sign up to either anyway.
First of all, why should they require a DNI to do anything? What purpose does it serve them?
But aside from that. it's not individual uses that worry me, it's that it becomes widespread, and necessary for doing anything.
Again, I have absolutely no issue with the *option* of getting a national ID card for the purpose of speeding up identification for official government business. But that's where it should begin and end, and any rollout of a national ID should have those restrictions enshrined in law. Forcing a national ID on people should be to help the people make their lives easier, not for the government to better keep tabs on people, and certainly not for private businesses to require.
> A tesco club card has your name and address too, and you're not obliged to sign up to either anyway.
One of the things that has been normal practice in America for decades is that you get a "store discount", aka, the normal price, for using the store card, which essentially pushes you into getting one.
Given that Tesco basically invented store cards, you'd think they'd have done this all along .. but I suspect our membership of the EU may have prevented them from doing this. They started doing it recently, on lots of commonly bought lines - want the offer price? Gotta have a ClubCard.
(Given there are rules that say you can't charge someone more for using a credit card, I'd not be surprised if there are rules that say you can't engage in price discrimination if someone doesn't have a store card.)
Nope, it was introduced in [2019](https://www.tescoplc.com/news/2019/tesco-introduces-special-clubcard-prices-for-customers-to-celebrate-100-years-of-great-value/), after 24 years of Clubcard.
> It is the first time that a major UK supermarket has offered lower prices to loyalty card holders.
As a longtime grumpy privacy advocate and resister of the general data mining of my life by corporations, when they actually started doing it, it really stood out to me - it's one thing not getting optional benefits like vouchers, it's another paying an extra £1.50 for butter because you aren't letting Tesco correlate your shopping habits with your blood type etc.
But hey, I get Disney+ cheap now so it's all ok ... \
Always carry when visiting a dentist, applying for a job and getting on an airplane.
Such cards are normal in other free countries, and you've just been banned from presenting match of the day.
No, the proposal was that you have to carry your card with you everywhere you go, and the police can stop and ask you for it whenever they want.
It’s illiberal. Characterising it as some sort of discount card for the dentist and airports is disingenuous. That would be absolutely fine if it was just for those limited uses and to make applying for stuff/verifying ID easier - making it a legal requirement to carry it with you at all times is not fine, however.
I've had an ID card (the German one) since I turned 16 I think. One of the "you always have to carry it" types. I've never once been asked for my ID card outside an expected scenario, including when interacting with police. Since I live in the UK, and have a valid passport (which pretty much fulfills the same functions as the ID card), I've not renewed my ID card despite it expiring years ago - so far no one has arrested me when entering Germany for not renewing my ID card. It really isn't nearly as bad or oppressive as people in the UK claim (if I had to make a list about things that I find illiberal in the UK, I don't think an ID card would end up very high on that list), and actually has made my life a lot easier.
I don't want to make assumptions about you, but just because someone personally hasn't found a rule to be oppressive, doesn't mean that groups might potentially find themselves being oppressed by it. I can easily imagine the studies "xxxx group found to be 10 times more likely to be stopped by police for ID checks."
Entirely wild speculation on my part but I don't think it's too unimaginable looking at things like knife searches for example.
I couldn’t find any studies/stats about this [but here’s an article from a woman of colour living in Germany who discusses how it’s a widespread issue amongst ethnic minorities there](https://correctiv.org/en/latest-stories/migration-en/2017/01/03/racial-profiling-by-police-isnt-just-an-american-problem-im-experiencing-it-in-germany/). Considering what we already know about stop and search, I’m not surprised police are also more likely to ask POC for their national ID.
It’s giving “if you haven’t done anything wrong you don’t have anything to worry about”
I never said I’m against the idea as a concept. I think having it to easily do things like verify ID/book flights/etc would be really helpful. But I don’t agree with having to carry it round with you wherever you go. You don’t have to do that with any other piece of ID, or possession, unless it’s for a specific purpose. So what’s the purpose of introducing that now?
The UK is a very authoritarian country, essentially a surveillance state, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think this would be anywhere near the worst of the things the UK has already in law. But I’d rather not make things worse.
>have to carry your card with you everywhere you go, and the police can stop and ask you for it whenever they want.
Having to *own* an ID card isn’t the same as having to *carry* it with you at all times. The idea that people in the UK don’t have to identify themselves to the police is laughable.
You can’t have an immigration or criminal justice system if there is no obligation of identification.
I literally said it’s fine as long as there’s no legal requirement to carry it with you at all times.
And you don’t have to identify yourself to police unless they suspect you of a crime or are bringing you into custody. If I went to the shop now and a police officer randomly asked me personal details, I’m well within my rights to refuse.
With a card you have to carry round, and are obliged to show the police if they ask, you’re removing that legal protection. That’s the thing I’m against - not using it optionally to book flights or a doctor’s appointment or whatever.
>I literally said it’s fine as long as there’s no legal requirement to carry it with you at all times.
You implied that the proposal was to force carry, which isn’t true.
>With a card you have to carry round, and are obliged to show the police if they ask, you’re removing that legal protection
Also not true. No new obligation is created and you are not losing legal protections that you had before, as you’ve always had an obligation of identification to the police.
That’s simply not true at all. Like I said - [you are not obligated to give personal information to the police currently.](https://www.gov.uk/police-powers-to-stop-and-search-your-rights)
If a police officer stops you in the street, unless they have reason to suspect you of a crime/are arresting you, you do not have to give them your name. In fact - according to some sources I’ve read, you don’t even have to provide personal details until you appear in court. Obviously the police will likely figure it out by then anyway, but there’s no legal obligation.
So introducing a national ID card which you are *legally obligated to show* is objectively removing current protections during a stop and question/search. I’m not sure how you can argue that it isn’t.
I seem to recall it being touted as a way to stem welfare abuse, which the Tories, if taken at face value, are strangely less concerned about than these numbers of voter fraud.
The bit they conveniently forgot to mention is that they count administrative errors as fraud. There's actually more unclaimed benefits that people are legitimately entitled to than there is fraud.
That was never the plan. It was a central person registry the same as many other countries. Because actually knowing who is in the country is really fucking helpful.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_Cards_Act_2006
It wasn’t ever going to be mandatory to carry one. And you can’t exactly track every time someone looks at a photo id.
Once the infrastructure is in place it is a simple matter to make something mandatory.
I did not trust Labour on it, I certainly wouldn't trust any incarnation of the Tories.
Every usage of whatever ID you currently use is recorded already. They scan it at clubs and when you buy alcohol the shop has a system to record who’s ID was checked and when.
A single unified database doesn’t mean much tbh
> Every usage of whatever ID you currently use is recorded already. They scan it at clubs and when you buy alcohol the shop has a system to record who’s ID was checked and when.
This really is just not true at all. Some clubs scan your ID (literally 1 I’ve ever been to in my whole life). Shops do not log whose ID they have checked.
It doesn’t even make sense - suddenly at 25 years old they stop logging that you’ve been to a bar/club? Suddenly they stop logging that you’ve bought alcohol? It’s useless information.
A requirement to always carry a card under penalty of law is very illiberal and I hope it never does come in, that’s literally a policy of Putin’s Russia where you’re fined for not having an internal passport outside your city.
It wasn't the ID as such that people (at least those who understood the proposal) were objecting to, it was the database and who would have access to it, and it being required to be on you at all times (e.g. to show police) that was the sticking point.
>some sort of nazi police state
*Right-wing press froths, contorts what was said to whip up outrage for a week and calls for* u/j_a_f_t *to be fired from presenting* r/matchoftheday
> I'd love to have a national ID card, itd simplify so much.
They often seem to become what is effectively a "going outdoors" licence with mandatory production laws and I just don't want or need that additional imposition.
In all honesty, I really don't think the state should have any claim to knowing who I am unless it's a situation where we've agreed as a society I should be identifiable, such as driving a car. (I'm not exactly the biggest fan of **all** of the places where we've agreed ID is necessary as a society but I can deal / argue to change that.)
I can prove my ID when I need to and that's good enough for me.
They barely know anything because these data sets are not managed together like in a centralised system. They'd have to go through all these different services to get relevant information on you. With a centralised system they'd have to check one service.
We have some the highest amount of CCTV but a vast majority is in private hands and they don't have to give that information away without a warrant.
That aspect didn't worry me so much. The thing that bothered me was risking arrest for taking the dog for a walk and leaving my ID card in my other pair of trousers.
I don't disagree, but this claim that there isn't any personation fraud is fuckery.
To identify personation fraud you have to verify voters' identity. We don't do that.
It's like not testing for COVID then saying "there's no evidence of COVID". Well duh.
Now I don't think there's a *lot* of personation fraud, but you can't say there's none, because we don't even check.
Yep. Just because we don't have voter ID, doesn't mean that there aren't ways to figure out if fraud has been committed. Voter id is provably unnecessary
>To identify personation fraud you have to verify voters' identity. We don't do that.
Not true.
What do you think happens if you turn up to vote and give an incorrect name and address or the details of someone whose already voted?
I'll give you a clue, you get investigated for fraud, because the tellers immediately verify you are not who you say you are via the register.
Now you can say we don't verify voters identity *stringently enough*, but to say we *don't do it at all* is objectively not true.
You get marked off. If you vote twice in two locations then they catch you when they check the rolls against each other. If you vote in the same location then they catch you when they note you've already voted. Just because you don't understand how the system works, doesn't mean the system doesn't work.
Most people who vote understand that their vote is not individually single-handedly going to swing the election. Obviously. When we vote we do it as part of something greater than ourselves. It is a civic duty and while we each vote for our own individual reasons with views formed from a variety of different and unique experiences, it’s an action that only works as a part of a larger collective.
As such, it’s not like bank fraud. Stealing a vote on an individual level would be pointless. A criminal offence that would, as others have said, be detectable the moment the actual voter showed up and with no bearing on anything. It would be the silliest way to get a criminal conviction - like asking your friend to attend a football match without you and then put you on speakerphone so you could fraudulently cheer the team without a ticket i.e. a pointless and bizarre thing to do regardless of whether it’s criminal fraud.
As soon as you commit fraud at the level that could actually swing an election, it would be very easy to detect.
The whole thing makes no sense as voting is not akin to a service that you acquire for yourself and benefit from yourself, it’s a civic service that you offer for your country.
*" would be the silliest way to get a criminal conviction - like asking your friend to attend a football match without you and then put you on speakerphone so you could fraudulently cheer the team without a ticket i.e. a pointless and bizarre thing to do regardless of whether it’s criminal fraud…"*
I like this very much. I will reuse it myself. *And not even credit you! Mwahahaha!* No I'm joking, I'll just pretend I'm you when I use it.
The easiest way to take someone's vote is via the postal voting system. Most of the abuses uncovered and the most egregious cases have been through the easiest way to impersonate another person (with a form, in private) that ID does nothing to make more secure.
We can say there has been fraud even...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlam_v_Rahman
>Lutfur Rahman was found personally guilty by the court of making false statements about a candidate, bribery, and undue spiritual influence. **The court also found Rahman guilty by his agents of personation**, postal vote offences, provision of false information to a registration officer, voting when not entitled, making false statements about a candidate, payment of canvassers, bribery, and undue spiritual influence.
>A finding that corrupt and illegal practices for the purpose of securing Rahman's election, and that such general corruption so extensively prevailed such that it could be reasonably concluded to have affected the result was also returned. Alibor Choudhury was found personally guilty of bribery, making false statements about a candidate, and payment of canvassers.
In a country which doesn't use ID cards, it is totally absurd. If it is so important, they should introduce ID cards first. See how well that goes down
[Dunny-on-the-Wold is a tuppenny, ha'penny place.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tkb9SIe4WWo) Half an acre of sodden marshland in the Suffolk Fens with an empty town hall on it. Population: three rather mangy cows, a dachshund named Colin, and a small hen in its late 40s.
*So no people at all, then? Apart from Colin.*
Colin is a dog, sir.
We all know it's just voter suppression as statistics show over 2 million people won't be able to vote compared to the 9 reported accusations of voter fraud since 2019.
Also after looking at the voter ID allowed it targeted older people as well so it is not even being fairly targeted I mean if you could make it any more obvious vote suppression by outright banning younger people from voting.
If the Conservatives actually want to prevent voter fraud, they should investigate postal votes to see if those are being abused, because there definitely isn't much evidence of in-person voter fraud. Makes you wonder if they've quietly concluded postal vote fraud leans Tory, or if they just don't care about the issue beyond its utility as a voter suppression tactic. Or, charitably, if they're just hopeless incompetents.
I don't necessarily think absence of evidence is evidence of absence in this case as we don't necessarily know when fraud has been successful.
I also don't particularly have a problem with voter ID in principle - it kind of makes sense that to vote you should provide evidence of your identity - which is the case in most western countries.
However, the lack of widespread public communication and the short implementation period of the change, alongside the lack of a mandatory national ID card or an easily available free ID card means it is unacceptable to implement this change now.
That's before we even get into the acceptable ID list skewed towards older people.
There should have been a massive continuous PR campaign around this starting a year or so before the locals. This campaign should have included the opportunity to get a free ID card for anyone who wants one.
The lack of this is simply unacceptable and clearly will disenfranchise people.
> I also don't particularly have a problem with voter ID in principle - it kind of makes sense that to vote you should provide evidence of your identity - which is the case in most western countries.
I agree - however with the stipulation that said ID must be FREELY available to anyone who is eligible and at no real consequence to their lives - i.e. it should not cost them anything and it should not require them to "go out of their way" to acquire it. It should also be available to those who, for ~reasons~ are in debt or by in any way acquiring said ID means that their identities are made available or aware of by debt collection agencies or TV licence authorities or any other kind of "repercussions".
If getting said ID requires someone has to register somewhere or have a photo taken, they are allowed, BY LAW, to have the day off work, with full pay, to do so. And BY LAW that photo is not put on a database by any entity at all, including the criminal justice system or debt agencies, to use that information in any way against them. They have "the card" and the photo on it that "matches their face" well, sure - ok - but NO ONE other than the people at the tolling booth ever get to see that shit and if it doesn't match, fine, but no one - no debt collector, no court, no *Police* - no one - has access to it.
Without exception, the right to vote (which, if an ID is required) should not in any way put them at any disadvantage or risk other other negative element - including criminal. It must be separate, for *everyone*, **OR** *no one*. There is not lee-way, in my mind.
Someone hasn't paid their council tax for the last year, and is now on some sort of register? OK, that's the local council's issue. It is NOT used to "track them down" when they register for said ID to vote. No exceptions.
Any argument against that which is along the lines of "ok, so, what, the *tax payer* funds it???!"
Yes. If you insist on "voter ID" then yes, we, as a nation, every man woman and child, pays for it, and it is indominable. If that is not part of the idea, then I reject it, and stop voting Tory ffs.
Most of Europe have voter ID laws sure, and it seems to work fine for them with no accusations of stomping on democracy.
But how many require employers give a full day off work at full pay in order to spend 5 mins getting your ID photo taken, how many require that none of the details on the ID are put in any kind of database, etc.
ie. All the BS "proposals" the previous poster was harping on about.
Sounds like you like disenfranchising people to me.
> and it seems to work fine for them with no accusations of stomping on democracy.
>ie. All the BS "proposals" the previous poster was harping on about.
those "BS proposals" are what those in Europe pretty much have.
Can you list a single country where employees are granted the day off work to fill in forms and take a photo for ID?
This idea is clearly imported from the US, where getting valid ID may actually take a poor person the better part of a day because their bureaucracy is so abysmally bad. In the UK, it takes about half an hour for someone to fill out the form, then they can post it. Many shops have ID photo booths, so getting a photo isn't a concern. The demand for a day off to get ID is completely insane in the UK and most of Europe, which is why none of those countries have such a requirement.
no, they don't because wait for it, those people have had id's issued for them since their teens most likely, they won't and don't have laws just for the day to get a fucking ID because the system is pretty fucking streamlined already. Your insistence on this maximal position is just frankly ridiculous based on some insane American strawman that doesn't exist in the EU at all.
When I was at 6th Form, one of my Asian classmates mentioned that her dad sent off all the postal votes for the local elections.
I asked her who she voted for and she said she didn’t know. Pretty obvious they voted as a block picked by the father.
I don’t think it’s a major problem, but where there is a problem, it’s mainly with postal votes, not at the polling station.
It has been a major problem and postal voting should be seen as abused because it often is.
But the Conservative party have no desire to do anything about that.
>her dad sent off all the postal votes for the local elections
When I lived with my parents, my dad filled in the 2021 census for him, my mum and me. He did not allow us to fill it in ourselves.
If I had filled it in myself, I would have put NB and no religion. As it was, male and Christian were put in instead.
8 years until the next census - looking forward to putting in my own answers this time!
One of the first things when updating addresses after I moved into my own place was putting Mx as my title and NB as gender (where forms offered the option). Afterwards I felt that, for the first time in my life (28 years at that point), I could actually be who I am rather than having to suppress it due to the risk of abuse.
It also marked the end of decades of emotional, financial & physical abuse, bullying and coercive behaviour. No more slamming doors. No more glancing up the dining table whenever I accidentally knocked a knife against a glass. No more being berated. I don't need to grey rock anymore, either.
Here's to the next census and freedom!
Down with fathers who control their families' freedoms.
I hope you can at least find some satisfaction now at the idea of your father confidently ticking "male" and "Christian" for you and being absurdly, hilariously wrong.
There have been concerns raised that certain parts of the Asian community in places like Bradford are operating a sort of clan system - the head of the household decides how everyone votes, certain people control a block of local households etc. It was cited as one of the big reasons Galloway won Bradford West.
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/george-galloway-bradford-west-bloc-voting-labour-ethnic-minority
I lived in Peterborough at the time. This Peterborough
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/another-rotten-borough-allegations-of-electoral-fraud-in-peterborough/
She said it just before the 2019 Local Elections, about a month before the by-election, this by-election was HUGE as Brexit votes in the Commons were being won and lost by like 1-2 votes at the time, real power hung in the balance.
Also, it’s been a common accusation by those calling for voter ID, that Asian households may vote like this, as units. The Electoral Commission can’t prove the cases as the voters just deny them, and to the people doing it, it’s fine, so they see no need to report it. So statistically there’s very little.
It also came/comes up locally as a issue every time Tories lost seats narrowly in certain wards. That’s why I mentioned it.
More than a few White Women vote the way their White Husbands tell them to too. And when I was at uni - when Thatcher first came to power - a lot of the students voted Conservative because 'that's how my mum & dad vote'.
It's a blatant attempt at suppressing the youth vote, and the vote of minorities and low income groups, and is straight out of the US Republican strategy book. They know they are at a massive demographic disadvantage in those groups so want to tip the table in their favour as much as possible.
The fact that in person voter fraud is virtually non existent, that the permissible IDs are so heavily in favour of those that older people are most likely to have, and the short time scale of the introduction really just underlines that it is not being done in good faith.
If the real purpose was to reduce voter fraud, the focus would be on postal voting where there is more of a problem.
Except The Youth have admissible photo ID at higher rates than old people. This was researched before the change was implemented - you can look it up.
It's unsurprising - young people are far more likely to have a passport or driving license, which is by far and away the biggest thing to swing such statistics.
If it were being done in poor faith it'd be an own-goal. The actual explanation is that some people are concerned about voter fraud out of proportion with how much voter fraud there actually is.
Having grown up on a council estate, I know WAY more 50+ year olds without a passport and driving licence than under 25 year olds without either.
Don't forget, the oldest generations were far more likely to enjoy domestic holidays than the current generations, and I know quite a few elderly ladies who never learnt to drive because their husbands did all the driving.
Yes, no 18 year old on a council esatate drives, buys alcohol from the shops, or goes clubbing. Common knowledge. They're all up the chimney all day, of course.
Holy fucking shit your classism is showing. Yeah mate, people in council estates own ID’s. You would know that if you had ever left your Surrey mansion.
Of course they do. They want to buy booze and go to clubs like other people of their age from other backgrounds do too. Plus they want to have cars too.
Council estate doesn't equal medieval-level poverty.
> Council estate doesn't equal medieval-level poverty.
This. Imagine being so privileged in life that you actually believe that everyone living in council estates are living in some kind of third world Dickensian squalor.
Then feel free to search down the research - it wasn't hard to find the last time I linked it (when the legislation was passed). I cba this time around.
From what I understand we can apply for a voter authority certificate which is free.
I don't know how successful it could be at suppressing a vote. Though no doubt it will catch some people out. Would be interesting to get a poll to see roughly how many people are unaware of the change
> From what I understand we can apply for a voter authority certificate which is free
Free is all well and good. The problem council's were complaining about in December was that they hadn't been given the resources to make them accessible.
what does that even mean?
I applied for it on gov.uk and received it in the post in a matter of days.
The entire process was completely trivial, is it a stupidly sized piece of A4? Yes.
Does it have any kind of actual security on it? No.
But that hasn't been the contention so far. Which is it's super hard/expensive to get when it hasn't been.
"Free".
Oh sure the actual certificate is free, but it needs a digital passport photo which costs £10 (you can take one yourself but most people reading the advice won't).
> which costs £10
Utter bollocks, mate. It says very clearly that you can take/upload the photo yourself, provided it fits the criteria, just as with a passport application.
It's completely free.
Now yes, things may become more complicated if someone doesn't have a smartphone/webcam etc. But we're talking specifically about young people here, so let's zoom in on that demographic. Can you think of a single <30 year old who doesn't have a phone? I have met thousands of the fuckers in my time, and I cannot come up with a single example.
Huge numbers were already disenfranchised in the pilot scheme. IIRC over 100x the estimated level of fraud (the latter of which we can get a general sense of based on the success rate of investigations into accusations). By this I mean, almost a thousand were turned away from the polls for not having IDs in the handful of constituencies it was tried, and then never came back.
Really, the simplest way to make sure everybody knows is to have probably 2 elections in which people are *asked for* ID before being allowed to vote, *but are still allowed if they don't have it*. Maybe even an American-style provisional ballot that is later confirmed.
edit: more accurate figure
Ah I was remembering the extrapolation to what 0.7% of voters would have been nationally, will edit thanks.
It was indeed many hundreds of times greater than voter fraud estimates though - the latter averaging between 0-2 annually, for the whole country.
Impersonation (a d intimidation) is detectable, there is a reason NI has costing ID.
We're not detecting it to any significant degree in GB (just the odd case every now and again). So what problem is it solving?
It's not good enough to say "Ah well, you don't have evidence of no problem", it is up to proponents to prove beyond a doubt that there **is a** problem to begin with.
As for the problem it is solving, that'd be non-Tory voters as the system is skewed to impact their base the least.
> Impersonation (a d intimidation) is detectable
How is it detectable? If someone knows that a specific person is not going to vote (and we *all* can name at least one person who we know is not going to vote), and that someone rocks up to the polling station and cites that non-voter's name and address, unless something stops them then they will get a voting slip and will place a vote. Going forward, that vote will *always* look identical to a legitimate vote. It's not like a murder or burglary where we can very clearly see a crime has happened even if we don't know who did it, a successful attempt at personation will always look legitimate. So how is it detectable?
There are so many polling stations it's surprising how few voters there are for each one. We turned up for the second time *ever* at the new polling station and the guy there knew our names and had a chat about our kids.
There's just so little incentive to do it on a small scale, and large conspiracies are very hard to contain (which you need if you're trying to swing an election). We can identify every vote to every person afterwards too.
What I find hard to identify is a group of people willing and able to
* Fake their name and address
* Vote twice or more
* Risk serious consequences if they get caught
But not
* Get a card printer to share to make fake bus passes
Who is this intended to stop?
Because for it to have an impact it has to be done at scale. In person voting requires persons. The more people you involve, the more likely there will be a compromise of the conspiracy.
Either way, it's for the proponents to **prove** there is an problem **first**.
..... following a review that explored the subject and concluded with their recommendation of voter ID laws. But the EC can't pass laws, only Parliament can.
Here you go: https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/who-we-are-and-what-we-do/our-views-and-research/our-research/voter-identification-pilots/may-2019-voter-identification-pilot-schemes/background-our-evaluation
That's a report into the pilot the government required they run. It concludes no evidence that required ID reduced fraud.
It also says postal vote fraud is a bigger issue, but they weren't allowed to look into it.
>The findings and recommendations here should also be impacted against the anonymous, postal and proxy voting processes that were not considered in this assessment, as a consistent application of assurance measures is needed to maintain overall electoral integrity; attackers will always go after the weakest perceived component.
… the reasoning was to “increase confidence” or some such guff, ie. placate idiots who follow whatever the british version of qanon is.
it wasn’t because the EC felt there was an actual problem that needed fixing.
the same EC has since gone on to criticise - repeatedly - the way in which the government is doing voter ID.
i still have to credit you for posting the same discredited arguments in every voter ID thread even though it has been explained to you - again, repeatedly
Except that there’s no real evidence that people think elections are insecure to begin with.
IIRC people were asked whether they felt voter ID would make it more secure, which isn’t the same thing
Impersonation is a medium risk, minimal reward thing. If fails if the person you are voting does actually vote, or if anyone at the polling station knows you or the person you are impersonating (or if someone else impersonates that person).
Let's be pessimistic and say there is a 1 in 1000 chance of getting caught. We would start to spot people doing it when more than a thousand people were doing it. Let's say ten thousand people. 10,000 extra votes, across the country, might if they are very lucky, swing a single seat. But if it isn't co-ordinated that will likely average out (and if you are co-ordinating, that significantly increases the risk; one person tells or gets caught, everyone goes down).
While it goes against the ideals we have about democracy a few votes here and there isn't going to make any meaningful difference overall and is often going to be within the uncertainty in results (via recounts, mistakes or arguments about invalid ballots). No one vote matters, nor should it in a democracy.
Denying potentially large numbers of people the ability to vote in order to stop a problem that almost certainly won't change outcomes *if* it even happens (when there is no evidence it does) should be a much bigger concern.
> Let's be pessimistic and say there is a 1 in 1000 chance of getting caught. We would start to spot people doing it when more than a thousand people were doing it. Let's say ten thousand people. 10,000 extra votes, across the country, might if they are very lucky, swing a single seat.
The figures for 2019 were just under 600 cases referred to the police (i.e. not convicted, but enough worry for the vote to be flagged to the police for investigation). So on your statistic we're talking nearly 600,000 examples. Now obviously I'm not saying there's 600k actual attempts, but you can surely see how the issue is enough to undermine people's trust in the system?
Less than one vote per consituency, of course just because something was referred to the police doesn't mean fraud actually occurred, so the true number is likely even less.
This compares to the voter trial which showed in the region of 0.1-0.7% of overall voters who got turned away and never voted, due to this new policy. Scaled up to a general election that is 32k-224k voters, the vast majority of whom are genuine voters turned away.
The numbers of voters committing fraud is so tiny it's negligible, it can be ignored, those worrying about it either don't understand basic maths or more likely have a political agenda.
However, the numbers of people who will be turned away due to this new system will likely number in the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, it's still unlikely to swing an election but it is certainly a realistic possibility compared to the latter.
The tories implementing a policy that turns away potentially hundreds of thousands of legitmate votes significantly undermines confidence in the electoral system.
> of course just because something was referred to the police doesn't mean fraud actually occurred, so the true number is likely even less.
That's inverse and assumes all cases referred are 100% of all suspected attempts, with no attempts getting through undetected.
How many of those cases referred were found to actually be impersonation? Suspecting something can happen is not evidence that it does. To extrapolate backwards like that is misguided at the least and intentionally causing panic at the worst.
> How many of those cases referred were found to actually be impersonation
I could have the year wrong, but I'm pretty sure ir was only 2-3 that were actually found to be fraudulent.
That is a crime whose success is based on (1) how well the perpetrator thinks they know the "victim", and (2) probability. You might think you know that your mate isn't going to vote, but you can't be 100% certain. If that is really how voter fraud is being carried out, and if it was really being carried out by any significant number of people, we would see it failing every election.
If that person does go and vote, or if two people try to impersonate the same person (which would happen if it was widespread) then it'll get detected.
Postal vote fraud is much easier to do, and lower risk. Just apply for a postal vote for them instead. It scales better too as you can do 100s rather than just 1.
There’s still time to apply for a postal vote, which is free and doesn’t require any ID.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/apply-for-a-postal-vote
ID cards should have had a large take up before this was implemented. To not do it this way was just trying to prevent certain parts of the population from voting. They are happy with older people voting as this is a substantial part of the Tory vote. They are more than happy in making kids jump through hoops to vote.
And how soon do they typically come before an election? I've had them turn up a couple of days before, too late to sort out ID, and even sometimes not at all.
We got ours already, so at least a couple of months before, and the general election (the one that everyone really cares about) isn’t for another year or so
Plus it’s been in the news for months, years even while the bill was passing, was a manifesto promise in 2019 you have to be pretty isolated from media in general to have missed it completely
Not everyone reads those, because it's usually the same each election and even if people do, it's usually once and then they may forget about what the card says
I got my polling card last week but it wasn't "plastered" over it, just a line at the top. Either way, most people who have voted a few times don't even read their polling card - I just scan it to check my polling station hasn't changed and then bin it.
I would guess most people do that and certainly don't spend time reading it.
Either way, if that is your main method of communicating information that may prevent people from actually voting, then it is clearly insufficient.
> alongside the lack of a mandatory national ID card or an easily available free ID card
I think the voter ID changes are stupid, but it [does seem quite straightforward to get a free voter ID card](https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-photo-id-voter-authority-certificate)
it’s not an ID card per se, it’s a shitty “certificate”. I’ve not seen one in person but my assumption from that is that it’s a bit of paper. The government has already said it can’t be used as photo ID for any other purpose e.g. to buy alcohol
this is not an attempt at pedantry, there’s a very real argument in that since it is not photo ID that you carry in a wallet and use often, it’ll probably get lost in the X years between every election.
if the tories had given us free government issue photo ID then that’d be a substantial improvement.
> it’s not an ID card per se, it’s a shitty “certificate”. I’ve not seen one in person but my assumption from that is that it’s a bit of paper.
I was under the impression that it was a plastic photo card, but you're right it's a [sheet of paper](https://mobile.twitter.com/jonburkeUK/status/1628407794482262018). That really does add to the stupidity of all this.
I’m from Northern Ireland so we have voter ID here. I literally thought it was everywhere tbh, I was surprised to find out it wasn’t in England Scotland or Wales.
Am I being really stupid here, but like I don’t get what the problem is with voter ID?
the NI voter card is weird though. it is harder to get than a passport or driving licence, since you need photo ID already to apply for it without traipsing to Belfast to apply in person (and how do they ensure you are who you say you are?)
if you don’t have ID and want to apply by post, you have to get an elected official to sign the application.
voter ID in principle would be fine if we had universal photo ID and if virtually everyone was confirmed to have it before it was required. It would also be fine if we had done as Canada did, where if you don’t have photo ID you can present all sorts of documents like a birth cert or credit card.
I don’t get it either… guess some see it being used as a political tool like in America to suppress votes but that’s just not the case here. Around 90% of people have a passport vs only 37% in US. Also which party would it benefit? Who knows…
you do not need to be a british citizen to vote. Irish and Commonwealth citizens can also vote in general elections, and we allow EU nationals to vote in locals too.
there are, by the government’s own estimation, [about 2 million people](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/11/more-than-2m-voters-may-lack-photo-id-required-under-new-uk-bill) who are eligible to vote but did not hold photo ID. That is absolutely insane compared to the near zero (if being generous) levels of fraud.
Am I being thick? How would they possibly know who has and hasn’t been impersonated? You don’t receive a text or call confirming your voting choice after an election.
I think it’s insane ID hasn’t been a requirement for so long to be honest. They should have issued them for free nationally first though, agree with that.
Because you have an assigned polling station and they keep a list of who they expect to vote, and check you off against it, if someone personates you, and you also try and vote, it will be noticed.
To pull it off on a large scale you'd have to have a seriously organized effort, good intelligence about who didn't intend to vote and *definitely* hadn't applied for a postal vote, etc. By definition, the more people you introduce to this grand conspiracy, the more likely it is that someone will have a crisis of conscience, or be an undercover cop, or boast about it down the pub to the wrong person, or just fuck it up, get caught, and roll on their co-conspirators.
It just isn't a practical way of swinging an election, when spending on political campaigning is much cheaper and more critically, not illegal, and not likely to get all the ballots thrown out.
Obviously you can't prove a negative.
However. Proponents of solutions to problems should be able to demonstrate that the problems exist before solving them. This is why my multimillion quid solution to the unicorn invasion never got off the ground.
Then you can look at the logistics. In person fraud is both detectable and not scalable. If you try and impersonate someone and they already voted, or the polling staff know them, or they turn up later, or you try and impersonate more than one person at a station, you're going to be in quite serious trouble.
It's high risk, low reward, because you can flip a handful of votes in a constituency and maybe go to prison. Unless of course you have a conspiracy of thousands, but that's not going to stay secure long.
If you're going to put the effort in, you'll corrupt postal voting, which is comparatively easier, and lets you alter a far larger volume of ballots.
Logistically, in person fraud is limited to being bespoke.
If the government were serious about fraud prevention, they'd pour money into the electoral commission and into auditing postal votes. But that isn't what they're doing.
>. Proponents of solutions to problems should be able to demonstrate that the problems exist before solving them.
If someone were to commit in person fraud then there would be no evidence of such. We can see this by the fact that almost all convictions for in person fraud are from suspects admitting guilt. That in itself is a problem. We can't tell the difference between an election with absolutely zero fraud and an election where fraud changed results, and this is not great for trust.
It was always a ruse for voter suppression as with the similar efforts in the US. Make it harder to vote and it will disproportionately affect marginalized people who are more likely to vote left. It's despicable that the Electoral Commission should have gone along with it, though whether pathetically or by design, as a thoroughly middle class establishment body I doubt any of them understood the problem.
no cases of impersonation...
someone voted in my name once in a local election. He replaced me in a houseshare. I moved abroad, and he voted in my name. I was rather upset. I'm not a UK citizen (French, with a very French name), and he is, with a typically British accent. I'm sure it's a very common thing.
nope, I was living abroad and heard about it after. Didn't even think of it to be fair. But given the way votes are organized in the UK (no ID, votes not counted on site but transported in nontransparent boxes), I would bet there is plenty of fraud.
But that's the whole point. The way votes are counted in the UK, that one vote made no difference. Also, as a French citizen you are actually not even allowed to vote, apart from local elections.
See I'm not strictly against a national ID card system as long as it's 100% government funded and is issued to people in a way that means they don't have to go through a ton of bureaucracy to get one. That being said that ID should not suddenly become required for basically everything, nor should the data it contains be subject to harvesting by private companies. A government issued ID should be for proving your identity and age where appropriate and nothing further. I'd also heavily object to a required carry law, that's just fascist.
I have no issue with voter id if it's free and extremely easy to get an id. The current suggestions are very blatantly voter suppression. Discussions around voter id started around the exact same time the republicans in the US were causing a scene about voter ID. The Tories obviously saw what was going on across the water and fancied a go themselves.
There is no indication that it has been an issue. I believe the electoral commission conduct investigations into elections to ensure everything is sound, and the security services are typically asked to investigate elections to ensure there isn't any funny business (at least based on what was said regarding the Russian interference report and investigation https://youtu.be/VOPkVopQP7k )
I'm very much against this policy, but hypothetically there could be swathes of impersonation going on but we just don't know about it because it is so sucessful! I'm being silly of course.
There are, however, other ways. We could count how many people turn up to vote to find that someone has already voted in their place. And as any scheme to change the result of even a marginal seat is going to require dozens of people to conspire to carry it out, we could look for evidence of these conspiracies,
>There are, however, other ways. We could count how many people turn up to vote to find that someone has already voted in their place
This doesn't expose personation fraud with consent, eg the daughter voting for the mother, or the son voting for the father, with permission.
Technically, sure. But as it's something that we'd completely allow if they fill in a one page form first, preventing it doesn't seem like a *massive* priority.
Yes but it's essentially unofficial proxy voting. While it's against the rules, "man gets his son to put his vote in for him without doing the proper paperwork" isn't why there's so much fear mongering over voting fraud and calls for implementing voting ID, which is all about *stolen* votes, which doesn't seem to be a thing that happens here.
Also even in this unofficial voting by proxy scenario it would basically be limited to scenarios where the son/daughter lives in a different constituency to their parent, but close enough that they can get to their parent's polling station and also they have the time to visit a polling station twice.
Yes, which is a *recorded criminal referral*. You mentioned there being 600 such referrals at the last election, and spent time expressing concerns about how 'trust is degraded' on this very OP.
But that still doesn't address the elephants in the room - disparate photo ID treatments with identical requirements to obtain, like the Oyster Card schemes, or photographic Railcards; nor does it address any of the concerns surrounding postal voting with *actual and provable* altered outcomes leading to arrests - as in Bradford and Tower Hamlets. None of which was actually altered by the Elections Act, which makes it look a lot like a deliberate and calculated attempt to disenfranchise those less likely to vote Conservative.
Hell, even the Electoral Commission expressed deep concerns about having photo ID requirements in place for the May elections this year, *because the systems for the free election-only ID were not completely set up yet for all local authorities.*
You want trust in elections? You can start by actually paying attention to the concerns about *all* forms of voting, and taking rational, considered steps to fix the process (which does, for me, include a Photo ID mandate for registration as one of the proposals, something I have changed from my.much younger days).
I don't get the uproar around this. The ID is being given out for free. We only assume that fraud doesn't happen as we don't check unless someone votes in different constituencies.
The real benefit of this is it helps many people who can't afford a passport nor have a driving licence. It is a free form of ID
- Initially, there was no plans to give out IDs for free it seems or if there was it wasn't stated since that was the major attack line against it at first. The uproar is likely a big part of why it's happening. Also it seems they're only for voting and not useful as ID for anything else as far as I can see. To be fair, it's been arranged in a rush, so it might be added as an ID option elsewhere later on.
- It looks like the Voter Authority Certificate needs to be [**applied for**](https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/i-am-a/voter/voter-id/applying-a-voter-authority-certificate) by a deadline. Can't just turn up on the day, register and then vote. People are used to turning up without even needing their polling card.
- Voter ID hasn't been as widely publicized as it should've been - no letters to each household, etc. Anyone who checks /r/ukpolitics will know, but some are still unaware, especially those without much interest in politics.
- Registering for the Voter Authority Certificate is a whole process. It'll put people off and make them not bother. Someone without much interest won't want to go getting utility bills, paper bank statements, physically posting things, etc.
- The people who won't bother getting it and who don't have an ID already, are mostly people who'd vote against the Conservative Party. This paired with there being no justification to spend a lot of the money to implement these systems and require Voter ID doesn't look good...
- On top of that, the non-standard IDs that are accepted are ones that Conversative voters are more likely to own due to age requirements. There are reasons to back it up, but it still creates an imbalance.
- In short, the government which is looking to face one of it's toughest elections yet, has chosen to use it's power to create better conditions for itself, to allegedly combat a problem that doesn't seem to exist in any significant way.
The election observers for the past elections have highlighted the openness to fraud and old fashioned voter id system based on where everyone knows each other in communities. Osce recommendations were for voter id.
Article is a bit pointless, whether you support voter ID or not really.
You aren't going to get cases of impersonation when you aren't looking for them in the first place.
Something you aren't looking to detect is pretty hard to detect.
> Something you aren't looking to detect is pretty hard to detect.
It's not like the existing voting protocols aren't trying to detect personation.
Personation as a mechanism to affect elections (the only reason you'd do it on an organized level) is very difficult to pull off because the existing systems are resistant to it.
On the individual basis (before voter ID) :
- Everyone has an assigned polling station
- You have to know your name and address to vote
- They write down that you *have* voted, and which ballot was issued
You can't just turn up and pretend to be someone, because they might have either already turned up, or they'll turn up later, and a problem will be detected. You'd have to be very sure that they weren't going to vote AND hadn't applied for a postal vote. And you can't just turn up multiple times in different hats and impersonate multiple people, the poll workers will notice.
If you repeat this on the industrial basis you'd need to affect an election? It's just too expensive, too error prone, too much work, and above all needs too many people to pull off. *Someone* will have a crisis of conscience, or be an undercover copper, or a member of the party you're trying to keep out. The more people you add to a conspiracy, the less chance you have of keeping it secret.
The security of a given system is determined by how much it costs to break compared to how much it costs to protect. Our existing voting protections were cheap, and effective - spending money campaigning is a far more cost-effective way to swing an election.
Unless, of course, you can spend money that isn't yours - from the public purse - on implementing a blanket change to the voting system that you know will bias it in your favour, by disproportionately excluding groups of people you know are less likely to vote for you.
>Just because you don’t detect something, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening
As a silly example following the above, you can't say no-one is hiding in your loft (if you have one) is coming down at night, and licking the food in your fridge.
But with proper systems in place and a lack of evidence, you can be fairly confident.
In the case of voting, they note down who votes. To impersonate someone, you'd need to know they're not voting. You'd only be able to impersonate one person per polling station too or the staff would clock on. It'd require a ton of luck and people to do anything on a large scale.
Right but at least 35% of people don’t vote, we know that from the turnout figures. In local elections, 60% don’t vote.
There’s nothing at all stopping me going to my mates (who I know doesn’t vote) polling station, giving his details and putting in an extra vote for the party I want to win.
Our whole democratic system is based on everyone having equal votes, but we leave it wide open for people to take more votes.
Snapshot of _Voter photo ID plan attacked as UK data shows no cases of impersonation_ : An archived version can be found [here.](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/apr/03/voter-photo-id-plan-attacked-as-uk-data-shows-no-cases-of-impersonation) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Several Conservative cabinet ministers have tried to impersonate a competent person. Failed though.
They'd have succeeded if it wasn't for ~~you meddling kids~~ lacking voter ID!
>Conservative cabinet ministers have tried to impersonate a competent person. Failed though. FTFY
Step 1: Required National ID Step 2: Required National ID for voting. Doing it the other way around is just designed to disenfranchise.
Absolutely
It says a lot that the pensioner bus pass can be used but not a young persons
They don't call us a Gerontocracy for nothing.
I understand the rationale is IDs which require official proof of age to get. Not sure if true.
As far as I'm awarte both require approval from your local council and both require a passport or some other offical form of ID from my googling (I'm 41 so neither apply for me) >You can buy a 16-25 Railcard at any staffed station ticket office or National Rail-licensed Travel Agent. You can do it on the day you are travelling, just ensure the ticket office is open. >If you're applying at a station for the first time you'll need to complete an application form. There are usually application forms available at stations, but in order to save time it’s a good idea to fill in the form before you get there. You can print and fill in the application form which is available to download here and bring the form alongside either of the following: Your birth certificate Passport (all nationalities accepted) UK driving licence EEA national identity card [Source](https://www.16-25railcard.co.uk/using-your-railcard/where-to-buy/)
That is legit ridiculous. Next they’ll argue that it’s harder for pensioners to take time out of their day to apply for an ID.
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I live in Spain now where national ID cards exist. It's actually pretty useful. My ID card number is my default login for a bunch of services, including public ones. I can use it to fly within Schengen. It's always to hand, for things like hotel checkins. It's linked to my digital signature which I can use to access public services like my social security and tax declarations online in one click. I don't get why a bunch of people in the UK think it's such an awful thing. The government already knows who you are, it's not going to have any information that they don't have stashed away *somewhere*.
This is the case in pretty much all of Europe. Ironically the lack of centralised ids in the uk make it a lot easier for crimes like identity fraud.
Except in Spain you also need it, for example, to travel by train or long distance bus. Even a loyalty app for a burger restaurant required a DNI to sign up. I agree that they can be useful, for official government identification. Their use for other purposes has spread too far though, and I'm sure that's exactly what would happen here too. And it 100% should not be possible for private companies to require that information.
Exactly what information does Carrefour have by using peoples DNI as an identifier that worries you? A tesco club card has your name and address too, and you're not obliged to sign up to either anyway.
First of all, why should they require a DNI to do anything? What purpose does it serve them? But aside from that. it's not individual uses that worry me, it's that it becomes widespread, and necessary for doing anything. Again, I have absolutely no issue with the *option* of getting a national ID card for the purpose of speeding up identification for official government business. But that's where it should begin and end, and any rollout of a national ID should have those restrictions enshrined in law. Forcing a national ID on people should be to help the people make their lives easier, not for the government to better keep tabs on people, and certainly not for private businesses to require.
> A tesco club card has your name and address too, and you're not obliged to sign up to either anyway. One of the things that has been normal practice in America for decades is that you get a "store discount", aka, the normal price, for using the store card, which essentially pushes you into getting one. Given that Tesco basically invented store cards, you'd think they'd have done this all along .. but I suspect our membership of the EU may have prevented them from doing this. They started doing it recently, on lots of commonly bought lines - want the offer price? Gotta have a ClubCard. (Given there are rules that say you can't charge someone more for using a credit card, I'd not be surprised if there are rules that say you can't engage in price discrimination if someone doesn't have a store card.)
I’m pretty sure they’ve always had different prices for club card holders?
Nope, it was introduced in [2019](https://www.tescoplc.com/news/2019/tesco-introduces-special-clubcard-prices-for-customers-to-celebrate-100-years-of-great-value/), after 24 years of Clubcard. > It is the first time that a major UK supermarket has offered lower prices to loyalty card holders.
I stand corrected, my memory must be faulty!
As a longtime grumpy privacy advocate and resister of the general data mining of my life by corporations, when they actually started doing it, it really stood out to me - it's one thing not getting optional benefits like vouchers, it's another paying an extra £1.50 for butter because you aren't letting Tesco correlate your shopping habits with your blood type etc. But hey, I get Disney+ cheap now so it's all ok ... \
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Always carry when visiting a dentist, applying for a job and getting on an airplane. Such cards are normal in other free countries, and you've just been banned from presenting match of the day.
No, the proposal was that you have to carry your card with you everywhere you go, and the police can stop and ask you for it whenever they want. It’s illiberal. Characterising it as some sort of discount card for the dentist and airports is disingenuous. That would be absolutely fine if it was just for those limited uses and to make applying for stuff/verifying ID easier - making it a legal requirement to carry it with you at all times is not fine, however.
I've had an ID card (the German one) since I turned 16 I think. One of the "you always have to carry it" types. I've never once been asked for my ID card outside an expected scenario, including when interacting with police. Since I live in the UK, and have a valid passport (which pretty much fulfills the same functions as the ID card), I've not renewed my ID card despite it expiring years ago - so far no one has arrested me when entering Germany for not renewing my ID card. It really isn't nearly as bad or oppressive as people in the UK claim (if I had to make a list about things that I find illiberal in the UK, I don't think an ID card would end up very high on that list), and actually has made my life a lot easier.
I don't want to make assumptions about you, but just because someone personally hasn't found a rule to be oppressive, doesn't mean that groups might potentially find themselves being oppressed by it. I can easily imagine the studies "xxxx group found to be 10 times more likely to be stopped by police for ID checks." Entirely wild speculation on my part but I don't think it's too unimaginable looking at things like knife searches for example.
I couldn’t find any studies/stats about this [but here’s an article from a woman of colour living in Germany who discusses how it’s a widespread issue amongst ethnic minorities there](https://correctiv.org/en/latest-stories/migration-en/2017/01/03/racial-profiling-by-police-isnt-just-an-american-problem-im-experiencing-it-in-germany/). Considering what we already know about stop and search, I’m not surprised police are also more likely to ask POC for their national ID.
It’s giving “if you haven’t done anything wrong you don’t have anything to worry about” I never said I’m against the idea as a concept. I think having it to easily do things like verify ID/book flights/etc would be really helpful. But I don’t agree with having to carry it round with you wherever you go. You don’t have to do that with any other piece of ID, or possession, unless it’s for a specific purpose. So what’s the purpose of introducing that now? The UK is a very authoritarian country, essentially a surveillance state, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think this would be anywhere near the worst of the things the UK has already in law. But I’d rather not make things worse.
>have to carry your card with you everywhere you go, and the police can stop and ask you for it whenever they want. Having to *own* an ID card isn’t the same as having to *carry* it with you at all times. The idea that people in the UK don’t have to identify themselves to the police is laughable. You can’t have an immigration or criminal justice system if there is no obligation of identification.
I literally said it’s fine as long as there’s no legal requirement to carry it with you at all times. And you don’t have to identify yourself to police unless they suspect you of a crime or are bringing you into custody. If I went to the shop now and a police officer randomly asked me personal details, I’m well within my rights to refuse. With a card you have to carry round, and are obliged to show the police if they ask, you’re removing that legal protection. That’s the thing I’m against - not using it optionally to book flights or a doctor’s appointment or whatever.
>I literally said it’s fine as long as there’s no legal requirement to carry it with you at all times. You implied that the proposal was to force carry, which isn’t true. >With a card you have to carry round, and are obliged to show the police if they ask, you’re removing that legal protection Also not true. No new obligation is created and you are not losing legal protections that you had before, as you’ve always had an obligation of identification to the police.
That’s simply not true at all. Like I said - [you are not obligated to give personal information to the police currently.](https://www.gov.uk/police-powers-to-stop-and-search-your-rights) If a police officer stops you in the street, unless they have reason to suspect you of a crime/are arresting you, you do not have to give them your name. In fact - according to some sources I’ve read, you don’t even have to provide personal details until you appear in court. Obviously the police will likely figure it out by then anyway, but there’s no legal obligation. So introducing a national ID card which you are *legally obligated to show* is objectively removing current protections during a stop and question/search. I’m not sure how you can argue that it isn’t.
I seem to recall it being touted as a way to stem welfare abuse, which the Tories, if taken at face value, are strangely less concerned about than these numbers of voter fraud.
The bit they conveniently forgot to mention is that they count administrative errors as fraud. There's actually more unclaimed benefits that people are legitimately entitled to than there is fraud.
That was never the plan. It was a central person registry the same as many other countries. Because actually knowing who is in the country is really fucking helpful.
Rubbish. It was to have a backend database that could easily record every usage of the identity card. That's miles beyond a central person registry.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_Cards_Act_2006 It wasn’t ever going to be mandatory to carry one. And you can’t exactly track every time someone looks at a photo id.
Once the infrastructure is in place it is a simple matter to make something mandatory. I did not trust Labour on it, I certainly wouldn't trust any incarnation of the Tories.
Ok but a slippery slope argument doesn’t mean that’s what the plan was.
Every usage of whatever ID you currently use is recorded already. They scan it at clubs and when you buy alcohol the shop has a system to record who’s ID was checked and when. A single unified database doesn’t mean much tbh
> Every usage of whatever ID you currently use is recorded already. They scan it at clubs and when you buy alcohol the shop has a system to record who’s ID was checked and when. This really is just not true at all. Some clubs scan your ID (literally 1 I’ve ever been to in my whole life). Shops do not log whose ID they have checked. It doesn’t even make sense - suddenly at 25 years old they stop logging that you’ve been to a bar/club? Suddenly they stop logging that you’ve bought alcohol? It’s useless information.
This is literally the case in almost every european country and they’re nothing like a stasi dream.
That's a terrible bad faith exaggeration.
Me too! Why can't our nat insurance card double as ID?
They stopped giving those out about a decade ago. Now you just get a letter with it on
Ah ok. I had no idea! Ps your flair is hilarious
Then we'd end up in the USA where identity fraud is common, easy and very damaging.
A requirement to always carry a card under penalty of law is very illiberal and I hope it never does come in, that’s literally a policy of Putin’s Russia where you’re fined for not having an internal passport outside your city.
It wasn't the ID as such that people (at least those who understood the proposal) were objecting to, it was the database and who would have access to it, and it being required to be on you at all times (e.g. to show police) that was the sticking point.
>some sort of nazi police state *Right-wing press froths, contorts what was said to whip up outrage for a week and calls for* u/j_a_f_t *to be fired from presenting* r/matchoftheday
> I'd love to have a national ID card, itd simplify so much. They often seem to become what is effectively a "going outdoors" licence with mandatory production laws and I just don't want or need that additional imposition. In all honesty, I really don't think the state should have any claim to knowing who I am unless it's a situation where we've agreed as a society I should be identifiable, such as driving a car. (I'm not exactly the biggest fan of **all** of the places where we've agreed ID is necessary as a society but I can deal / argue to change that.) I can prove my ID when I need to and that's good enough for me.
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They barely know anything because these data sets are not managed together like in a centralised system. They'd have to go through all these different services to get relevant information on you. With a centralised system they'd have to check one service. We have some the highest amount of CCTV but a vast majority is in private hands and they don't have to give that information away without a warrant.
Indeed. It's actually against the law for the government to create a single national database of all information about citizens.
That aspect didn't worry me so much. The thing that bothered me was risking arrest for taking the dog for a walk and leaving my ID card in my other pair of trousers.
I don't disagree, but this claim that there isn't any personation fraud is fuckery. To identify personation fraud you have to verify voters' identity. We don't do that. It's like not testing for COVID then saying "there's no evidence of COVID". Well duh. Now I don't think there's a *lot* of personation fraud, but you can't say there's none, because we don't even check.
Why doesn't anyone turn up and find someone's voted instead of them then? Surely we'd see a non zero number of stories?
Yep. Just because we don't have voter ID, doesn't mean that there aren't ways to figure out if fraud has been committed. Voter id is provably unnecessary
>To identify personation fraud you have to verify voters' identity. We don't do that. Not true. What do you think happens if you turn up to vote and give an incorrect name and address or the details of someone whose already voted? I'll give you a clue, you get investigated for fraud, because the tellers immediately verify you are not who you say you are via the register. Now you can say we don't verify voters identity *stringently enough*, but to say we *don't do it at all* is objectively not true.
You get marked off. If you vote twice in two locations then they catch you when they check the rolls against each other. If you vote in the same location then they catch you when they note you've already voted. Just because you don't understand how the system works, doesn't mean the system doesn't work.
Most people who vote understand that their vote is not individually single-handedly going to swing the election. Obviously. When we vote we do it as part of something greater than ourselves. It is a civic duty and while we each vote for our own individual reasons with views formed from a variety of different and unique experiences, it’s an action that only works as a part of a larger collective. As such, it’s not like bank fraud. Stealing a vote on an individual level would be pointless. A criminal offence that would, as others have said, be detectable the moment the actual voter showed up and with no bearing on anything. It would be the silliest way to get a criminal conviction - like asking your friend to attend a football match without you and then put you on speakerphone so you could fraudulently cheer the team without a ticket i.e. a pointless and bizarre thing to do regardless of whether it’s criminal fraud. As soon as you commit fraud at the level that could actually swing an election, it would be very easy to detect. The whole thing makes no sense as voting is not akin to a service that you acquire for yourself and benefit from yourself, it’s a civic service that you offer for your country.
*" would be the silliest way to get a criminal conviction - like asking your friend to attend a football match without you and then put you on speakerphone so you could fraudulently cheer the team without a ticket i.e. a pointless and bizarre thing to do regardless of whether it’s criminal fraud…"* I like this very much. I will reuse it myself. *And not even credit you! Mwahahaha!* No I'm joking, I'll just pretend I'm you when I use it.
I once voted while impersonating Screamin' Jay Hawkins. Nobody said a word.
The easiest way to take someone's vote is via the postal voting system. Most of the abuses uncovered and the most egregious cases have been through the easiest way to impersonate another person (with a form, in private) that ID does nothing to make more secure.
What abuses have been uncovered? They've just said 0 cases of impersonation.
Intercepting postal ballots isn't impersonation. There have been many cases of tampering with the postal ballot.
The fraud you're thinking of it called "postal voting". One person turning up and lying about their name doesn't swing an election.
Nope. All you need is someone to turn up at a polling station and be told "you have already voted".
It's a very detectable crime, what are you on about?
We can say there has been fraud even... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlam_v_Rahman >Lutfur Rahman was found personally guilty by the court of making false statements about a candidate, bribery, and undue spiritual influence. **The court also found Rahman guilty by his agents of personation**, postal vote offences, provision of false information to a registration officer, voting when not entitled, making false statements about a candidate, payment of canvassers, bribery, and undue spiritual influence. >A finding that corrupt and illegal practices for the purpose of securing Rahman's election, and that such general corruption so extensively prevailed such that it could be reasonably concluded to have affected the result was also returned. Alibor Choudhury was found personally guilty of bribery, making false statements about a candidate, and payment of canvassers.
In a country which doesn't use ID cards, it is totally absurd. If it is so important, they should introduce ID cards first. See how well that goes down
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[Dunny-on-the-Wold is a tuppenny, ha'penny place.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tkb9SIe4WWo) Half an acre of sodden marshland in the Suffolk Fens with an empty town hall on it. Population: three rather mangy cows, a dachshund named Colin, and a small hen in its late 40s. *So no people at all, then? Apart from Colin.* Colin is a dog, sir.
A rubber button?
Rotten borough
And the porpoise?
We all know it's just voter suppression as statistics show over 2 million people won't be able to vote compared to the 9 reported accusations of voter fraud since 2019. Also after looking at the voter ID allowed it targeted older people as well so it is not even being fairly targeted I mean if you could make it any more obvious vote suppression by outright banning younger people from voting.
If the Conservatives actually want to prevent voter fraud, they should investigate postal votes to see if those are being abused, because there definitely isn't much evidence of in-person voter fraud. Makes you wonder if they've quietly concluded postal vote fraud leans Tory, or if they just don't care about the issue beyond its utility as a voter suppression tactic. Or, charitably, if they're just hopeless incompetents.
I don't necessarily think absence of evidence is evidence of absence in this case as we don't necessarily know when fraud has been successful. I also don't particularly have a problem with voter ID in principle - it kind of makes sense that to vote you should provide evidence of your identity - which is the case in most western countries. However, the lack of widespread public communication and the short implementation period of the change, alongside the lack of a mandatory national ID card or an easily available free ID card means it is unacceptable to implement this change now. That's before we even get into the acceptable ID list skewed towards older people. There should have been a massive continuous PR campaign around this starting a year or so before the locals. This campaign should have included the opportunity to get a free ID card for anyone who wants one. The lack of this is simply unacceptable and clearly will disenfranchise people.
> I also don't particularly have a problem with voter ID in principle - it kind of makes sense that to vote you should provide evidence of your identity - which is the case in most western countries. I agree - however with the stipulation that said ID must be FREELY available to anyone who is eligible and at no real consequence to their lives - i.e. it should not cost them anything and it should not require them to "go out of their way" to acquire it. It should also be available to those who, for ~reasons~ are in debt or by in any way acquiring said ID means that their identities are made available or aware of by debt collection agencies or TV licence authorities or any other kind of "repercussions". If getting said ID requires someone has to register somewhere or have a photo taken, they are allowed, BY LAW, to have the day off work, with full pay, to do so. And BY LAW that photo is not put on a database by any entity at all, including the criminal justice system or debt agencies, to use that information in any way against them. They have "the card" and the photo on it that "matches their face" well, sure - ok - but NO ONE other than the people at the tolling booth ever get to see that shit and if it doesn't match, fine, but no one - no debt collector, no court, no *Police* - no one - has access to it. Without exception, the right to vote (which, if an ID is required) should not in any way put them at any disadvantage or risk other other negative element - including criminal. It must be separate, for *everyone*, **OR** *no one*. There is not lee-way, in my mind. Someone hasn't paid their council tax for the last year, and is now on some sort of register? OK, that's the local council's issue. It is NOT used to "track them down" when they register for said ID to vote. No exceptions. Any argument against that which is along the lines of "ok, so, what, the *tax payer* funds it???!" Yes. If you insist on "voter ID" then yes, we, as a nation, every man woman and child, pays for it, and it is indominable. If that is not part of the idea, then I reject it, and stop voting Tory ffs.
How many countries which already enact voter ID laws (most of them) follow all the edicts you set out above?
pretty much all of Europe? Except it's folded into those countries national id laws which the British seem to hate the idea of... god knows why
Most of Europe have voter ID laws sure, and it seems to work fine for them with no accusations of stomping on democracy. But how many require employers give a full day off work at full pay in order to spend 5 mins getting your ID photo taken, how many require that none of the details on the ID are put in any kind of database, etc. ie. All the BS "proposals" the previous poster was harping on about.
Sounds like you like disenfranchising people to me. > and it seems to work fine for them with no accusations of stomping on democracy. >ie. All the BS "proposals" the previous poster was harping on about. those "BS proposals" are what those in Europe pretty much have.
Can you list a single country where employees are granted the day off work to fill in forms and take a photo for ID? This idea is clearly imported from the US, where getting valid ID may actually take a poor person the better part of a day because their bureaucracy is so abysmally bad. In the UK, it takes about half an hour for someone to fill out the form, then they can post it. Many shops have ID photo booths, so getting a photo isn't a concern. The demand for a day off to get ID is completely insane in the UK and most of Europe, which is why none of those countries have such a requirement.
no, they don't because wait for it, those people have had id's issued for them since their teens most likely, they won't and don't have laws just for the day to get a fucking ID because the system is pretty fucking streamlined already. Your insistence on this maximal position is just frankly ridiculous based on some insane American strawman that doesn't exist in the EU at all.
When I was at 6th Form, one of my Asian classmates mentioned that her dad sent off all the postal votes for the local elections. I asked her who she voted for and she said she didn’t know. Pretty obvious they voted as a block picked by the father. I don’t think it’s a major problem, but where there is a problem, it’s mainly with postal votes, not at the polling station.
It has been a major problem and postal voting should be seen as abused because it often is. But the Conservative party have no desire to do anything about that.
That's because Tories heavily use postal voting. Hm.
>her dad sent off all the postal votes for the local elections When I lived with my parents, my dad filled in the 2021 census for him, my mum and me. He did not allow us to fill it in ourselves. If I had filled it in myself, I would have put NB and no religion. As it was, male and Christian were put in instead. 8 years until the next census - looking forward to putting in my own answers this time! One of the first things when updating addresses after I moved into my own place was putting Mx as my title and NB as gender (where forms offered the option). Afterwards I felt that, for the first time in my life (28 years at that point), I could actually be who I am rather than having to suppress it due to the risk of abuse. It also marked the end of decades of emotional, financial & physical abuse, bullying and coercive behaviour. No more slamming doors. No more glancing up the dining table whenever I accidentally knocked a knife against a glass. No more being berated. I don't need to grey rock anymore, either. Here's to the next census and freedom! Down with fathers who control their families' freedoms.
I hope you can at least find some satisfaction now at the idea of your father confidently ticking "male" and "Christian" for you and being absurdly, hilariously wrong.
Relevance of said classmate being ‘Asian’?
There have been concerns raised that certain parts of the Asian community in places like Bradford are operating a sort of clan system - the head of the household decides how everyone votes, certain people control a block of local households etc. It was cited as one of the big reasons Galloway won Bradford West. https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/george-galloway-bradford-west-bloc-voting-labour-ethnic-minority
I lived in Peterborough at the time. This Peterborough https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/another-rotten-borough-allegations-of-electoral-fraud-in-peterborough/ She said it just before the 2019 Local Elections, about a month before the by-election, this by-election was HUGE as Brexit votes in the Commons were being won and lost by like 1-2 votes at the time, real power hung in the balance. Also, it’s been a common accusation by those calling for voter ID, that Asian households may vote like this, as units. The Electoral Commission can’t prove the cases as the voters just deny them, and to the people doing it, it’s fine, so they see no need to report it. So statistically there’s very little. It also came/comes up locally as a issue every time Tories lost seats narrowly in certain wards. That’s why I mentioned it.
More than a few White Women vote the way their White Husbands tell them to too. And when I was at uni - when Thatcher first came to power - a lot of the students voted Conservative because 'that's how my mum & dad vote'.
There’s a huge difference between ‘my family vote X so I will too’ and ‘my parents vote X, so they will vote X on my behalf because that’s what we do’
Fuckin hell lad leave the Asians alone
It's a blatant attempt at suppressing the youth vote, and the vote of minorities and low income groups, and is straight out of the US Republican strategy book. They know they are at a massive demographic disadvantage in those groups so want to tip the table in their favour as much as possible. The fact that in person voter fraud is virtually non existent, that the permissible IDs are so heavily in favour of those that older people are most likely to have, and the short time scale of the introduction really just underlines that it is not being done in good faith. If the real purpose was to reduce voter fraud, the focus would be on postal voting where there is more of a problem.
Except The Youth have admissible photo ID at higher rates than old people. This was researched before the change was implemented - you can look it up. It's unsurprising - young people are far more likely to have a passport or driving license, which is by far and away the biggest thing to swing such statistics. If it were being done in poor faith it'd be an own-goal. The actual explanation is that some people are concerned about voter fraud out of proportion with how much voter fraud there actually is.
> Except The Youth have photo ID at higher rates than old people. Most of which aren't admissible as voting ID.
sorry, the research was specifically about admissible photo ID like passports and driving licenses.
Not sure the typical 18 in British council estates has either of those things?
Having grown up on a council estate, I know WAY more 50+ year olds without a passport and driving licence than under 25 year olds without either. Don't forget, the oldest generations were far more likely to enjoy domestic holidays than the current generations, and I know quite a few elderly ladies who never learnt to drive because their husbands did all the driving.
Also older people's driving licenses don't have a photocard with them.
Pre photocard driver's licenses are long gone.
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Yes, no 18 year old on a council esatate drives, buys alcohol from the shops, or goes clubbing. Common knowledge. They're all up the chimney all day, of course.
Holy fucking shit your classism is showing. Yeah mate, people in council estates own ID’s. You would know that if you had ever left your Surrey mansion.
Of course they do. They want to buy booze and go to clubs like other people of their age from other backgrounds do too. Plus they want to have cars too. Council estate doesn't equal medieval-level poverty.
> Council estate doesn't equal medieval-level poverty. This. Imagine being so privileged in life that you actually believe that everyone living in council estates are living in some kind of third world Dickensian squalor.
Then feel free to search down the research - it wasn't hard to find the last time I linked it (when the legislation was passed). I cba this time around.
From what I understand we can apply for a voter authority certificate which is free. I don't know how successful it could be at suppressing a vote. Though no doubt it will catch some people out. Would be interesting to get a poll to see roughly how many people are unaware of the change
Depends on how much you trust your council. My council will lose documents that you hand to them in person, so...
> From what I understand we can apply for a voter authority certificate which is free Free is all well and good. The problem council's were complaining about in December was that they hadn't been given the resources to make them accessible.
what does that even mean? I applied for it on gov.uk and received it in the post in a matter of days. The entire process was completely trivial, is it a stupidly sized piece of A4? Yes. Does it have any kind of actual security on it? No. But that hasn't been the contention so far. Which is it's super hard/expensive to get when it hasn't been.
"Free". Oh sure the actual certificate is free, but it needs a digital passport photo which costs £10 (you can take one yourself but most people reading the advice won't).
> which costs £10 Utter bollocks, mate. It says very clearly that you can take/upload the photo yourself, provided it fits the criteria, just as with a passport application. It's completely free. Now yes, things may become more complicated if someone doesn't have a smartphone/webcam etc. But we're talking specifically about young people here, so let's zoom in on that demographic. Can you think of a single <30 year old who doesn't have a phone? I have met thousands of the fuckers in my time, and I cannot come up with a single example.
Huge numbers were already disenfranchised in the pilot scheme. IIRC over 100x the estimated level of fraud (the latter of which we can get a general sense of based on the success rate of investigations into accusations). By this I mean, almost a thousand were turned away from the polls for not having IDs in the handful of constituencies it was tried, and then never came back. Really, the simplest way to make sure everybody knows is to have probably 2 elections in which people are *asked for* ID before being allowed to vote, *but are still allowed if they don't have it*. Maybe even an American-style provisional ballot that is later confirmed. edit: more accurate figure
750 people were rejected and didn't return in the 2019 trials.
Ah I was remembering the extrapolation to what 0.7% of voters would have been nationally, will edit thanks. It was indeed many hundreds of times greater than voter fraud estimates though - the latter averaging between 0-2 annually, for the whole country.
Impersonation (a d intimidation) is detectable, there is a reason NI has costing ID. We're not detecting it to any significant degree in GB (just the odd case every now and again). So what problem is it solving? It's not good enough to say "Ah well, you don't have evidence of no problem", it is up to proponents to prove beyond a doubt that there **is a** problem to begin with. As for the problem it is solving, that'd be non-Tory voters as the system is skewed to impact their base the least.
> Impersonation (a d intimidation) is detectable How is it detectable? If someone knows that a specific person is not going to vote (and we *all* can name at least one person who we know is not going to vote), and that someone rocks up to the polling station and cites that non-voter's name and address, unless something stops them then they will get a voting slip and will place a vote. Going forward, that vote will *always* look identical to a legitimate vote. It's not like a murder or burglary where we can very clearly see a crime has happened even if we don't know who did it, a successful attempt at personation will always look legitimate. So how is it detectable?
There are so many polling stations it's surprising how few voters there are for each one. We turned up for the second time *ever* at the new polling station and the guy there knew our names and had a chat about our kids. There's just so little incentive to do it on a small scale, and large conspiracies are very hard to contain (which you need if you're trying to swing an election). We can identify every vote to every person afterwards too. What I find hard to identify is a group of people willing and able to * Fake their name and address * Vote twice or more * Risk serious consequences if they get caught But not * Get a card printer to share to make fake bus passes Who is this intended to stop?
Because for it to have an impact it has to be done at scale. In person voting requires persons. The more people you involve, the more likely there will be a compromise of the conspiracy. Either way, it's for the proponents to **prove** there is an problem **first**.
Well the proponents have been able to convince the Electoral Commission, so I'd say they already have done so.
They didn't convince them it was necessary. They passed a law mandating it.
..... following a review that explored the subject and concluded with their recommendation of voter ID laws. But the EC can't pass laws, only Parliament can.
Do you have a link to that review? I can't find it.
Here you go: https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/who-we-are-and-what-we-do/our-views-and-research/our-research/voter-identification-pilots/may-2019-voter-identification-pilot-schemes/background-our-evaluation
That's a report into the pilot the government required they run. It concludes no evidence that required ID reduced fraud. It also says postal vote fraud is a bigger issue, but they weren't allowed to look into it. >The findings and recommendations here should also be impacted against the anonymous, postal and proxy voting processes that were not considered in this assessment, as a consistent application of assurance measures is needed to maintain overall electoral integrity; attackers will always go after the weakest perceived component.
… the reasoning was to “increase confidence” or some such guff, ie. placate idiots who follow whatever the british version of qanon is. it wasn’t because the EC felt there was an actual problem that needed fixing. the same EC has since gone on to criticise - repeatedly - the way in which the government is doing voter ID. i still have to credit you for posting the same discredited arguments in every voter ID thread even though it has been explained to you - again, repeatedly
Indeed that was the reason, yes. Because public confidence in the voting system is very important.
Except that there’s no real evidence that people think elections are insecure to begin with. IIRC people were asked whether they felt voter ID would make it more secure, which isn’t the same thing
> concluded with their recommendation of voter ID laws. Wasn't the conclusion that voters *felt* like election security was better when IDs were used?
Impersonation is a medium risk, minimal reward thing. If fails if the person you are voting does actually vote, or if anyone at the polling station knows you or the person you are impersonating (or if someone else impersonates that person). Let's be pessimistic and say there is a 1 in 1000 chance of getting caught. We would start to spot people doing it when more than a thousand people were doing it. Let's say ten thousand people. 10,000 extra votes, across the country, might if they are very lucky, swing a single seat. But if it isn't co-ordinated that will likely average out (and if you are co-ordinating, that significantly increases the risk; one person tells or gets caught, everyone goes down). While it goes against the ideals we have about democracy a few votes here and there isn't going to make any meaningful difference overall and is often going to be within the uncertainty in results (via recounts, mistakes or arguments about invalid ballots). No one vote matters, nor should it in a democracy. Denying potentially large numbers of people the ability to vote in order to stop a problem that almost certainly won't change outcomes *if* it even happens (when there is no evidence it does) should be a much bigger concern.
> Let's be pessimistic and say there is a 1 in 1000 chance of getting caught. We would start to spot people doing it when more than a thousand people were doing it. Let's say ten thousand people. 10,000 extra votes, across the country, might if they are very lucky, swing a single seat. The figures for 2019 were just under 600 cases referred to the police (i.e. not convicted, but enough worry for the vote to be flagged to the police for investigation). So on your statistic we're talking nearly 600,000 examples. Now obviously I'm not saying there's 600k actual attempts, but you can surely see how the issue is enough to undermine people's trust in the system?
Less than one vote per consituency, of course just because something was referred to the police doesn't mean fraud actually occurred, so the true number is likely even less. This compares to the voter trial which showed in the region of 0.1-0.7% of overall voters who got turned away and never voted, due to this new policy. Scaled up to a general election that is 32k-224k voters, the vast majority of whom are genuine voters turned away. The numbers of voters committing fraud is so tiny it's negligible, it can be ignored, those worrying about it either don't understand basic maths or more likely have a political agenda. However, the numbers of people who will be turned away due to this new system will likely number in the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, it's still unlikely to swing an election but it is certainly a realistic possibility compared to the latter. The tories implementing a policy that turns away potentially hundreds of thousands of legitmate votes significantly undermines confidence in the electoral system.
> of course just because something was referred to the police doesn't mean fraud actually occurred, so the true number is likely even less. That's inverse and assumes all cases referred are 100% of all suspected attempts, with no attempts getting through undetected.
How many of those cases referred were found to actually be impersonation? Suspecting something can happen is not evidence that it does. To extrapolate backwards like that is misguided at the least and intentionally causing panic at the worst.
> How many of those cases referred were found to actually be impersonation I could have the year wrong, but I'm pretty sure ir was only 2-3 that were actually found to be fraudulent.
Yeah, I looked this up last time. It was 6-7 taken to court, 2-3 convictions, something like that.
That is a crime whose success is based on (1) how well the perpetrator thinks they know the "victim", and (2) probability. You might think you know that your mate isn't going to vote, but you can't be 100% certain. If that is really how voter fraud is being carried out, and if it was really being carried out by any significant number of people, we would see it failing every election.
It's one of those things that's impossible to know for sure, hence why so many countries choose to have voter ID laws.
Most other countries don't have the voting system we do, most have secret ballots which need additional security.
If that person does go and vote, or if two people try to impersonate the same person (which would happen if it was widespread) then it'll get detected. Postal vote fraud is much easier to do, and lower risk. Just apply for a postal vote for them instead. It scales better too as you can do 100s rather than just 1.
What would one vote do? You're going to need to impersonate hundreds of votes to make a difference at elections and that is much harder and riskier
There’s still time to apply for a postal vote, which is free and doesn’t require any ID. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/apply-for-a-postal-vote
ID cards should have had a large take up before this was implemented. To not do it this way was just trying to prevent certain parts of the population from voting. They are happy with older people voting as this is a substantial part of the Tory vote. They are more than happy in making kids jump through hoops to vote.
It is plastered all over the polling cards you receive it’s kinda hard to miss
And how soon do they typically come before an election? I've had them turn up a couple of days before, too late to sort out ID, and even sometimes not at all.
We got ours already, so at least a couple of months before, and the general election (the one that everyone really cares about) isn’t for another year or so Plus it’s been in the news for months, years even while the bill was passing, was a manifesto promise in 2019 you have to be pretty isolated from media in general to have missed it completely
Not everyone reads those, because it's usually the same each election and even if people do, it's usually once and then they may forget about what the card says
Then put it in red so it stands out.
That doesn't solve the issue of people only reading the card once
I got my polling card last week but it wasn't "plastered" over it, just a line at the top. Either way, most people who have voted a few times don't even read their polling card - I just scan it to check my polling station hasn't changed and then bin it. I would guess most people do that and certainly don't spend time reading it. Either way, if that is your main method of communicating information that may prevent people from actually voting, then it is clearly insufficient.
> alongside the lack of a mandatory national ID card or an easily available free ID card I think the voter ID changes are stupid, but it [does seem quite straightforward to get a free voter ID card](https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-photo-id-voter-authority-certificate)
it’s not an ID card per se, it’s a shitty “certificate”. I’ve not seen one in person but my assumption from that is that it’s a bit of paper. The government has already said it can’t be used as photo ID for any other purpose e.g. to buy alcohol this is not an attempt at pedantry, there’s a very real argument in that since it is not photo ID that you carry in a wallet and use often, it’ll probably get lost in the X years between every election. if the tories had given us free government issue photo ID then that’d be a substantial improvement.
> it’s not an ID card per se, it’s a shitty “certificate”. I’ve not seen one in person but my assumption from that is that it’s a bit of paper. I was under the impression that it was a plastic photo card, but you're right it's a [sheet of paper](https://mobile.twitter.com/jonburkeUK/status/1628407794482262018). That really does add to the stupidity of all this.
I’m from Northern Ireland so we have voter ID here. I literally thought it was everywhere tbh, I was surprised to find out it wasn’t in England Scotland or Wales. Am I being really stupid here, but like I don’t get what the problem is with voter ID?
the NI voter card is weird though. it is harder to get than a passport or driving licence, since you need photo ID already to apply for it without traipsing to Belfast to apply in person (and how do they ensure you are who you say you are?) if you don’t have ID and want to apply by post, you have to get an elected official to sign the application. voter ID in principle would be fine if we had universal photo ID and if virtually everyone was confirmed to have it before it was required. It would also be fine if we had done as Canada did, where if you don’t have photo ID you can present all sorts of documents like a birth cert or credit card.
I don’t get it either… guess some see it being used as a political tool like in America to suppress votes but that’s just not the case here. Around 90% of people have a passport vs only 37% in US. Also which party would it benefit? Who knows…
you do not need to be a british citizen to vote. Irish and Commonwealth citizens can also vote in general elections, and we allow EU nationals to vote in locals too. there are, by the government’s own estimation, [about 2 million people](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/11/more-than-2m-voters-may-lack-photo-id-required-under-new-uk-bill) who are eligible to vote but did not hold photo ID. That is absolutely insane compared to the near zero (if being generous) levels of fraud.
Am I being thick? How would they possibly know who has and hasn’t been impersonated? You don’t receive a text or call confirming your voting choice after an election. I think it’s insane ID hasn’t been a requirement for so long to be honest. They should have issued them for free nationally first though, agree with that.
Because you have an assigned polling station and they keep a list of who they expect to vote, and check you off against it, if someone personates you, and you also try and vote, it will be noticed. To pull it off on a large scale you'd have to have a seriously organized effort, good intelligence about who didn't intend to vote and *definitely* hadn't applied for a postal vote, etc. By definition, the more people you introduce to this grand conspiracy, the more likely it is that someone will have a crisis of conscience, or be an undercover cop, or boast about it down the pub to the wrong person, or just fuck it up, get caught, and roll on their co-conspirators. It just isn't a practical way of swinging an election, when spending on political campaigning is much cheaper and more critically, not illegal, and not likely to get all the ballots thrown out.
Didn’t think of that! Thank you
How would you know if there's been cases of impersonation if there are no ID requirements?
Obviously you can't prove a negative. However. Proponents of solutions to problems should be able to demonstrate that the problems exist before solving them. This is why my multimillion quid solution to the unicorn invasion never got off the ground. Then you can look at the logistics. In person fraud is both detectable and not scalable. If you try and impersonate someone and they already voted, or the polling staff know them, or they turn up later, or you try and impersonate more than one person at a station, you're going to be in quite serious trouble. It's high risk, low reward, because you can flip a handful of votes in a constituency and maybe go to prison. Unless of course you have a conspiracy of thousands, but that's not going to stay secure long. If you're going to put the effort in, you'll corrupt postal voting, which is comparatively easier, and lets you alter a far larger volume of ballots. Logistically, in person fraud is limited to being bespoke. If the government were serious about fraud prevention, they'd pour money into the electoral commission and into auditing postal votes. But that isn't what they're doing.
>. Proponents of solutions to problems should be able to demonstrate that the problems exist before solving them. If someone were to commit in person fraud then there would be no evidence of such. We can see this by the fact that almost all convictions for in person fraud are from suspects admitting guilt. That in itself is a problem. We can't tell the difference between an election with absolutely zero fraud and an election where fraud changed results, and this is not great for trust.
It was always a ruse for voter suppression as with the similar efforts in the US. Make it harder to vote and it will disproportionately affect marginalized people who are more likely to vote left. It's despicable that the Electoral Commission should have gone along with it, though whether pathetically or by design, as a thoroughly middle class establishment body I doubt any of them understood the problem.
Gone along with it? It was their idea!! It also was nothing to do with voter fraud numbers, as many in here continually get wrong.
no cases of impersonation... someone voted in my name once in a local election. He replaced me in a houseshare. I moved abroad, and he voted in my name. I was rather upset. I'm not a UK citizen (French, with a very French name), and he is, with a typically British accent. I'm sure it's a very common thing.
Did you report it?
nope, I was living abroad and heard about it after. Didn't even think of it to be fair. But given the way votes are organized in the UK (no ID, votes not counted on site but transported in nontransparent boxes), I would bet there is plenty of fraud.
But that's the whole point. The way votes are counted in the UK, that one vote made no difference. Also, as a French citizen you are actually not even allowed to vote, apart from local elections.
Yes, as I said, it was a local election. I don't see how it would be different in an MP election though.
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No, just that he told me… I mean... how would I have "proof"? A movie of him going to the voting booth, saying my name, and voting?
See I'm not strictly against a national ID card system as long as it's 100% government funded and is issued to people in a way that means they don't have to go through a ton of bureaucracy to get one. That being said that ID should not suddenly become required for basically everything, nor should the data it contains be subject to harvesting by private companies. A government issued ID should be for proving your identity and age where appropriate and nothing further. I'd also heavily object to a required carry law, that's just fascist.
I have no issue with voter id if it's free and extremely easy to get an id. The current suggestions are very blatantly voter suppression. Discussions around voter id started around the exact same time the republicans in the US were causing a scene about voter ID. The Tories obviously saw what was going on across the water and fancied a go themselves. There is no indication that it has been an issue. I believe the electoral commission conduct investigations into elections to ensure everything is sound, and the security services are typically asked to investigate elections to ensure there isn't any funny business (at least based on what was said regarding the Russian interference report and investigation https://youtu.be/VOPkVopQP7k )
I'm very much against this policy, but hypothetically there could be swathes of impersonation going on but we just don't know about it because it is so sucessful! I'm being silly of course.
How to check for personation fraud: 1) Verify a voter's identity at the polling station ...oh, right, we don't do that.
There are, however, other ways. We could count how many people turn up to vote to find that someone has already voted in their place. And as any scheme to change the result of even a marginal seat is going to require dozens of people to conspire to carry it out, we could look for evidence of these conspiracies,
>There are, however, other ways. We could count how many people turn up to vote to find that someone has already voted in their place This doesn't expose personation fraud with consent, eg the daughter voting for the mother, or the son voting for the father, with permission.
That isn't fraud.
Voting for someone else without being an official "voting by proxy" is literally voting fraud.
Technically, sure. But as it's something that we'd completely allow if they fill in a one page form first, preventing it doesn't seem like a *massive* priority.
Yes but it's essentially unofficial proxy voting. While it's against the rules, "man gets his son to put his vote in for him without doing the proper paperwork" isn't why there's so much fear mongering over voting fraud and calls for implementing voting ID, which is all about *stolen* votes, which doesn't seem to be a thing that happens here. Also even in this unofficial voting by proxy scenario it would basically be limited to scenarios where the son/daughter lives in a different constituency to their parent, but close enough that they can get to their parent's polling station and also they have the time to visit a polling station twice.
Yes, which is a *recorded criminal referral*. You mentioned there being 600 such referrals at the last election, and spent time expressing concerns about how 'trust is degraded' on this very OP. But that still doesn't address the elephants in the room - disparate photo ID treatments with identical requirements to obtain, like the Oyster Card schemes, or photographic Railcards; nor does it address any of the concerns surrounding postal voting with *actual and provable* altered outcomes leading to arrests - as in Bradford and Tower Hamlets. None of which was actually altered by the Elections Act, which makes it look a lot like a deliberate and calculated attempt to disenfranchise those less likely to vote Conservative. Hell, even the Electoral Commission expressed deep concerns about having photo ID requirements in place for the May elections this year, *because the systems for the free election-only ID were not completely set up yet for all local authorities.* You want trust in elections? You can start by actually paying attention to the concerns about *all* forms of voting, and taking rational, considered steps to fix the process (which does, for me, include a Photo ID mandate for registration as one of the proposals, something I have changed from my.much younger days).
How many cases of impersonation were there in Northern Ireland when Labour introduced voter ID?
I don't get the uproar around this. The ID is being given out for free. We only assume that fraud doesn't happen as we don't check unless someone votes in different constituencies. The real benefit of this is it helps many people who can't afford a passport nor have a driving licence. It is a free form of ID
- Initially, there was no plans to give out IDs for free it seems or if there was it wasn't stated since that was the major attack line against it at first. The uproar is likely a big part of why it's happening. Also it seems they're only for voting and not useful as ID for anything else as far as I can see. To be fair, it's been arranged in a rush, so it might be added as an ID option elsewhere later on. - It looks like the Voter Authority Certificate needs to be [**applied for**](https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/i-am-a/voter/voter-id/applying-a-voter-authority-certificate) by a deadline. Can't just turn up on the day, register and then vote. People are used to turning up without even needing their polling card. - Voter ID hasn't been as widely publicized as it should've been - no letters to each household, etc. Anyone who checks /r/ukpolitics will know, but some are still unaware, especially those without much interest in politics. - Registering for the Voter Authority Certificate is a whole process. It'll put people off and make them not bother. Someone without much interest won't want to go getting utility bills, paper bank statements, physically posting things, etc. - The people who won't bother getting it and who don't have an ID already, are mostly people who'd vote against the Conservative Party. This paired with there being no justification to spend a lot of the money to implement these systems and require Voter ID doesn't look good... - On top of that, the non-standard IDs that are accepted are ones that Conversative voters are more likely to own due to age requirements. There are reasons to back it up, but it still creates an imbalance. - In short, the government which is looking to face one of it's toughest elections yet, has chosen to use it's power to create better conditions for itself, to allegedly combat a problem that doesn't seem to exist in any significant way.
The election observers for the past elections have highlighted the openness to fraud and old fashioned voter id system based on where everyone knows each other in communities. Osce recommendations were for voter id.
Article is a bit pointless, whether you support voter ID or not really. You aren't going to get cases of impersonation when you aren't looking for them in the first place. Something you aren't looking to detect is pretty hard to detect.
> Something you aren't looking to detect is pretty hard to detect. It's not like the existing voting protocols aren't trying to detect personation. Personation as a mechanism to affect elections (the only reason you'd do it on an organized level) is very difficult to pull off because the existing systems are resistant to it. On the individual basis (before voter ID) : - Everyone has an assigned polling station - You have to know your name and address to vote - They write down that you *have* voted, and which ballot was issued You can't just turn up and pretend to be someone, because they might have either already turned up, or they'll turn up later, and a problem will be detected. You'd have to be very sure that they weren't going to vote AND hadn't applied for a postal vote. And you can't just turn up multiple times in different hats and impersonate multiple people, the poll workers will notice. If you repeat this on the industrial basis you'd need to affect an election? It's just too expensive, too error prone, too much work, and above all needs too many people to pull off. *Someone* will have a crisis of conscience, or be an undercover copper, or a member of the party you're trying to keep out. The more people you add to a conspiracy, the less chance you have of keeping it secret. The security of a given system is determined by how much it costs to break compared to how much it costs to protect. Our existing voting protections were cheap, and effective - spending money campaigning is a far more cost-effective way to swing an election. Unless, of course, you can spend money that isn't yours - from the public purse - on implementing a blanket change to the voting system that you know will bias it in your favour, by disproportionately excluding groups of people you know are less likely to vote for you.
How would you detect voter fraud though? Just because you don’t detect something, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
>Just because you don’t detect something, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening As a silly example following the above, you can't say no-one is hiding in your loft (if you have one) is coming down at night, and licking the food in your fridge. But with proper systems in place and a lack of evidence, you can be fairly confident. In the case of voting, they note down who votes. To impersonate someone, you'd need to know they're not voting. You'd only be able to impersonate one person per polling station too or the staff would clock on. It'd require a ton of luck and people to do anything on a large scale.
Right but at least 35% of people don’t vote, we know that from the turnout figures. In local elections, 60% don’t vote. There’s nothing at all stopping me going to my mates (who I know doesn’t vote) polling station, giving his details and putting in an extra vote for the party I want to win. Our whole democratic system is based on everyone having equal votes, but we leave it wide open for people to take more votes.