Voter ID rules could impact ability of many to cast their vote
/This article was featured in the SCDC Weekly - 29th May 2024.
With campaigning for a summer general election underway, political parties will be doing their best to convince the electorate to turn out on polling day and use their right to help determine the next UK government.
However, for the first time in a general election, voters across the UK will be required to bring photo ID to polling stations and recent studies have shown how these rules may disproportionally affect certain communities looking to cast their votes.
During the May 2023 local elections in England, the Electoral Commission (EC) found that approximately 14,000 voters were not issued with a ballot paper because they could not show an accepted form of ID.
Crucially, the EC said that "on average, more deprived areas had a higher proportion turned away compared to less deprived areas" and that people who were disabled, unemployed, from an ethnic minority community or younger faced greater problems when trying to vote.
To place those figures in context, the Electoral Reform Society points out that there were 88 allegations of in-person electoral fraud across the last three UK general elections - compared to a combined total of 153,800,000 votes cast without any allegations of fraud.
We’ll be promoting the Electoral Commission’s recently launched campaignand other useful resources as the election period unfolds, and continue to argue for communities to have more influence and control over the decisions that affect them.
What you need to know this week.
The SCDC Weekly gives you everything you need to know around community development and beyond.
It’s free, concise and delivered directly to your inbox every Wednesday.