Voters will have to show ID

[Ramrod]

Originally Posted by Damien

Either way a passport in card form would be useful IMO.

I agree there.....but 9/10 terrorists in the Schengen area wouldn't

[GrimUpNorth]

Originally Posted by Ramrod

This is ludicrous. I wanted to talk to EE about upgrading a phone (just talk, not actually do it). In order to pass security they wanted me to tell them where I'd bought the original phone from.....2 years ago......I have bought several phones in that time period. I couldn't answer the next two security questions either because they were so 'random'.....and I was sat looking at my EE account online at the time! Yet we can walk into a polling station, present them with a slip of paper, say 'yep, that's me', and vote in an election!

You don't even need you poll card to vote. If you turn up at the polling station and know the name registered at an address you can vote. The Presiding Officer cannot refuse to issue a ballot paper if the person presenting can successfully answer the prescribed questions.

About time things were tightened up.

Cheers

Grim

[Taf]

Originally Posted by Damien

I would like a National ID card so long as it contained no more additional information.

The cards only contain digital duplicates of what is printed on them. The "other" information is held on secure databases, including arrest warrants, no-fly alerts, suspension of driving licences, etc., only accessible by specific people in specific situations.

Failure to present your ID to specific persons at specific times (e.g. by a police officer when you are under suspicion) can result in arrest in many countries. The days of being allowed to "present your ID at a police station within 48 hours" are become rarer.

German drivers were compelled to carry ALL their vehicle information at all times when driving (hence the "man-bags" you saw blokes carrying) but now the information is all digitised and accessible via your ID card details. It seems odd that in the UK all that information can be accessed by the police just by a person giving their name (and perhaps address and date of birth). If you give a false name, they access the wrong information!

It is apparently very common for visitors to this country to get full free access to NHS services just by presenting someone else's NHS card!

Originally Posted by Taf

The cards only contain digital duplicates of what is printed on them. The "other" information is held on secure databases, including arrest warrants, no-fly alerts, suspension of driving licences, etc., only accessible by specific people in specific situations.

Failure to present your ID to specific persons at specific times (e.g. by a police officer when you are under suspicion) can result in arrest in many countries. The days of being allowed to "present your ID at a police station within 48 hours" are become rarer.

We do have an aversion to that kind of rule though. We certainly don't want it to be a requirement to have your ID at all times after all/

Originally Posted by Damien

We do have an aversion to that kind of rule though. We certainly don't want it to be a requirement to have your ID at all times after all/

The Armed Services do. My husband was always in a panic if he couldn't find his because the Navy would fine him if he failed to produce it to them or the police..Anyway I've always wondered why they didn't require ID to vote.

[Mr K]

A compromise might be to at least show your polling card before you vote (currently not compulsory). Not full proof but better than nothing, and most people do this anyway as it saves time at the polling station. If you don't have this then ID would be needed.

[Osem]

Originally Posted by Paul M

Thats nice for you, but you dont speak for everyone.


None of those require a photo id.
I dont see why should I have to specially dig my passport out just to vote, its OTT.

(And what if you dont have one, up until about 10 years ago I didnt).

None of these things? I only specified one.

Opening a bank account or withdrawing large amounts of cash would be another. Try doing that without photo ID. Even going into pubs/clubs a photo ID can be required depending on age. Photo ID is increasingly going to be required for all sorts of things like it or not.

Just to vote? I reckon voting's more important than any of the above so wouldn't have a problem taking may passport which I already have to do when photo ID is required because I don't have a photocard licence. No effort or digging's required, I just go to the safe and get it when needed.

Yes it is an inconvenience, yes there would be problems and yes it might be unfair to some (one of my sons included) but neither option is perfect and voting isn't something which ought to be open to abuse. I'd expect that some form of concession in the form of another ID card would be required for those who don't have passports or photo licences and see no reason why this couldn't be free to those in need.

[Ramrod]

Why is Labour so worried about a crackdown on voter fraud?

There is really only one satisfactory explanation for Labour’s discomfort: the party fears that it would suffer disproportionately from a crackdown on voter fraud because its current voters are more likely to be involved in fraud than those of other parties. In 2014 the Electoral Commission published a report which singled out 16 local authority areas where it believed voter fraud to be especially prevalent. They were: Birmingham, Bradford, Calderdale, Derby, Kirklees, Pendle, Slough, Walsall, Blackburn with Darwen, Burnley, Coventry, Hyndburn, Oldham, Peterborough, Tower Hamlets and Woking.

It doesn’t take a lot to spot the connection between these places: almost all, with the exception of Woking and Peterborough, are Labour strongholds. Enough said. Labour will go on about voter ‘disenfranchisement’ but really it knows that it has a higher number of fake votes cast for it than are cast for other parties, and so stands to lose out if the fraudsters are tackled.

[Osem]

Originally Posted by Ramrod

Why is Labour so worried about a crackdown on voter fraud?

Seems credible to me.

Originally Posted by Osem

Seems credible to me.

So despite oodles of voter fraud and constituency boundaries biased towards Labour they still couldn't win a one horse race .....awsome

[Mr K]

Heresay from the conservative Spectator rag. I've no objections to voters having to show their polling cards, It's if this goes further and requires ID which the poorest might not have. Also the latest registration changes which resulted in 800,000 mostly young people disappearing off the register. If anything the 'fiddle' is the other way. (I've got more sympathy for the changes to constituency boundaries).

Originally Posted by Mr K

Heresay from the conservative Spectator rag. I've no objections to voters having to show their polling cards, It's if this goes further and requires ID which the poorest might not have. Also the latest registration changes which resulted in 800,000 mostly young people disappearing off the register. If anything the 'fiddle' is the other way. (I've got more sympathy for the changes to constituency boundaries).

A lot of the people you say have disappeared off the register are simply people formerly registered under a household name who will now have to register for themselves ,if they can be bothered to spare 5 mins to undertake this arduous chore .Incidentally stopping single household registration is in itself a fraud prevention measure

[pip08456]

Originally Posted by Mr K

Heresay from the conservative Spectator rag. I've no objections to voters having to show their polling cards, It's if this goes further and requires ID which the poorest might not have. Also the latest registration changes which resulted in 800,000 mostly young people disappearing off the register. If anything the 'fiddle' is the other way. (I've got more sympathy for the changes to constituency boundaries).

Even the poorest have some sort of ID as their benefits are now paid into the bank and they will have at least a basic bank account with accompanying card.

As to the 800,000 you keep harping on about from the bottom of the article you linked to else where.

Jenny Watson, the chair of the watchdog (Electoral Commission), said the official figures indicate “there has been a reduction in the number of entries since the last registers were published under the household system”.

However, she argued that “a lot more has been done since then to ensure as many people as possible know that they need to register to vote before the deadline, and how they go about doing so”.

[Mr K]

Originally Posted by martyh

A lot of the people you say have disappeared off the register are simply people formerly registered under a household name who will now have to register for themselves ,if they can be bothered to spare 5 mins to undertake this arduous chore .Incidentally stopping single household registration is in itself a fraud prevention measure

For whatever reason young people are increasingly not registered to vote or not turning out to vote. You may say that's their look out/fault, partly it is. However whatever your political leaning young people not being engaged in politics or thinking voting matters or having a stake in the future is a big problem for the future of this country. Certainly more of an issue than virtually non-existent voter fraud.

How much fraud is actually there? I am not convinced this is a massive issue. I know it can be as we saw in Tower Hamlets but isolated incidents aren't evidence of it being a widespread problem. In that case it was postal voting anyway which seems to be more of a problem than in-person voting where I believe our system is already resilient.

After all it's risky to vote in person as someone else and also hard to scale. Sure you could do it but then that's one person, you probably can't do it in the same voting station so you would need to know the details of another person in another voting district and also be sure they haven't or won't vote lest they figure something is up. So maybe you get many people to vote as someone else but as well as the risk that one of them gets caught you have the additional risk one of them will reveal their plans to others or the police.

If you had a ring of 50 people who each voted three times in different districts posing as voters they knew would not vote then you've still only changed 150 votes. And that would be incredibly hard to pull off anyway!

So what evidence is there of such systematic fraud?