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Comment by throwaway8689 | Hacker News Reader

Northern Ireland has had a free voter ID card for years. I can't recall hearing complaints about disenfranchisement.

http://www.eoni.org.uk/Electoral-Identity-Card/Electoral-Ide...

The bigger issue is that the bill has a whole raft of other changes included alongside voter ID, and they're using arguments such as "other countries have voter ID" to effectively win public support for the entire bill.

I will not engage in a debate on voter id right now because of this (but thanks for attacking the weakest part of my post, using a throwaway :)

The Conservatives have been trying to criminalize all sorts of things since at least back to the 1994 criminal justice and public order act. Yet still people can glue themselves to motorways. Statutes and case law are only part of the picture.

I went and checked the proposed legislation and this is also included in the UK scheme; free electoral ID. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-02/0138... (page 63)

In the context of the UK, I've never heard a good argument against Voter ID.

How about not only there being a lack of evidence showing significant election fraud in the UK but there's also positive evidence there is no significant election fraud, and that there are hundreds of thousands of people in the UK who have the right to vote but cannot get ID and adding the extra hurdles and steps to allow these people to vote anyway will discourage at least some from voting?

And that this could potentially unfairly affect the results of elections, which is exactly the problem that voter ID is supposed to prevent

Well there was the well publicised case of Luther Rahman, the Tower Hamlets Mayor. See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-32428648

But I'm more inclined to suspect postal fraud. There was talk of students voting twice but whether that was a big thing is unknown. But clearly there has been some level of election fraud going on.

Lutfur not Luther.

I was once encouraged by a canvasser to vote in my home town and where I was studying because 'they'll never know'.

> How about not only there being a lack of evidence

Isn't this a chicken and egg problem? Without voter ID we don't know whether fraud has taken place or not.

> there are hundreds of thousands of people in the UK who have the right to vote but cannot get ID

That is a wider problem that should be fixed. Agreed that in the current state it would cause friction for people to vote.

> Isn't this a chicken and egg problem? Without voter ID we don't know whether fraud has taken place or not.

No, they keep a track of who has turned up to vote, if you are putting extra votes in or voting in someone else's name then either the number of votes and number of voters wont tally or you'll start seeing a significant number of people who have voted twice, once from the genuine voter and once the person who was fraudulently voting in someone else's name.

I've yet to hear a good argument for them.

There's no national ID system to base it off?

The politics is odd; voters don't want mandatory ID cards, but they seem comfortable with legally requiring ID to rent or buy a house, have a job, have a bank account, and now voting.

What training do those working in polling stations have to decide if your Voter ID matches the presenter? What is your recourse when you're turned away?

These sound like manageable problems, do they not?

No.

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