In the news last week were reports that the Electoral Commission wants to introduce mandatory photo ID before people can vote in England, Wales and Scotland. (It’s already a requirement in Northern Ireland)

The obvious reason for wanting to do this is an attempt to reduce electoral fraud in the UK, which is laudable. (For those not familiar with UK elections, the current system means you can only vote in one location, and your name is crossed off the list once you’ve voted, preventing voting twice)

But there are always drawbacks. In this case, two – firstly, the obvious that you get with nearly any measure is that it will cost. In order for this to work, the Electoral Commission or Returning Officers locally would need a process of issuing electoral ID to anyone who does not have a driving license or passport.

The second drawback is the one that is of more concern, and that is disenfranchisement. It is far more likely that marginalised groups will not have a driving license or passport, or have changed their name recently via marriage, or have a name that doesn’t translate into English consistently, which could cause problems matching up ID with voter records.

So, do the benefits of introducing voter ID outweigh the problems? It would seem not.

Widespread voter fraud does get detected in a number of ways by those involved in the process, such as individuals being seen voting more than once, people attempting to vote twice, (Once legitimately, once fraudulently by an imposter) known deceased people voting and so on. Despite this, only 25 allegations of voter impersonation at a polling stations were recorded by the Electoral Commission in 2012. (PDF Link, see paragraph 1.16) 19 of those related to one specific area, Peterborough. The Electoral Commission also highlights that none of these cases had any influence on any election result.

You’d not know this from reading press coverage, as news outlets list all electoral fraud, not cases that would have been stopped by mandatory voter ID. The Daily Mail is, unsurprisingly perhaps, the worst at this, with four of the five cases they listed having nothing to do with voter impersonation at polling stations. The fifth case involved corrupt polling station staff, so requiring polling station staff to check ID would not have helped. But it was not just the Daily Mail, as Channel 4 news also fell into this trap, citing the 2004 case in Birmingham which was down to postal vote fraud, not in-person fraud.

So why the push for ID? The Guardian gives us a clue, stating “tightening of the rules is necessary to restore public confidence following fears of ballot-rigging“. But we need to turn to the Electoral Commission’s own paper on the issue (PDF link, paragraphs 3.28 onwards) for the full story. They are pushing for ID checks for voters not because of fraud or even because they think it will have any impact on fraud, but purely because asking leading questions suggests the public think it will reduce fraud.

I would rather the Electoral Commission spent the money on voter education, rather than fixing a problem we don’t have and inevitably creating new problems.