New laws passed in 2022 mean that you now need an approved form of voter photo id to vote at a polling station.
This is an unnecessary law – there are hardly any cases of voter impersonation. It is an expensive law – it is estimated that it will cost £180 million per decade to administer. And it is a discriminatory law – poorer and disadvantaged groups are less likely to have the kind of photo id that is accepted.
The government trialled this ID policy during the 2018 and 2019 English local elections in a handful of local authorities. Even with public information campaigns, over 1,000 voters were refused a ballot for not having the right paperwork.
The Electoral Reform Society has listed the forms of photo id that will be accepted here. Most items on the list (e.g. passports and driving licences) can only be obtained by paying a fee, or by providing an earlier document (e.g. a passport) that itself requires a fee.
Local councils are supposed to provide free voter ID certificates, but they have very little time to put systems in place and notify voters of what they need to do if they don’t have ID before the elections in May.
Make sure you’re not one of the millions that could be excluded from voting in 2023! There is already one free option open to all: apply for a PASS card through CitizenCard – this usually costs £15 but you can use the code FREEVOTERID to obtain a free card. Don’t leave it too late though – it can take 21 days to process an application.
You can learn more about the issues and support the Electoral Reform Society’s campaign against these anti-democratic measures here.