The Guardian: Using photo ID in British elections will harm democracy, say US civil rights groups

Plans to force people to show photo ID to take part in UK elections amount to Republican-style voter suppression and are likely to erode faith in the democratic process rather than reinforce it, three leading US civil rights groups have warned.

In an intervention that could prove embarrassing to ministers, US groups that were at the frontline of efforts to combat vote-blocking efforts by Donald Trump and his allies, said ID laws disproportionately affected people from poorer and more marginalised communities.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), and Commons Cause said that while they did not campaign directly in the UK it was a common principle that such laws, without evidence of widespread election fraud, had a harmful impact.

Boris Johnson’s government is due to introduce a bill in the spring to make photo ID mandatory from 2023 for all UK-wide and English elections following two years of small-scale trials, despite repeated warnings from charities and others about its impact on groups less likely to possess the necessary documents. …

But critics point out that the offence is virtually unknown in the UK. Following the 2019 general election, there was one conviction for voter personation. Between 2010 and 2016, spanning two general elections and the EU referendum, there were 146 allegations with seven convictions, including five in one single incident.

UK charities representing groups including older people, those from minority ethnic backgrounds and the homeless have urged the government to reconsider the law.

Sylvia Albert, the director of voting and elections at Common Cause, a Washington DC-based civil rights group, said introducing voter ID when there was negligible evidence of a problem tended to have the paradoxical effect of making voters trust elections less.

“They try to say that they want to protect the integrity of the election, but the reality that our elections have strong integrity,” she said. “By doing this you’re actually undermining their integrity.

“Instituting aspects of voter suppression, including voter ID, is allowing the politicians to choose their voters, and that is not the strength of a democracy.”