The Tories are pushing ahead with their voter ID plan. It’s an assault on democracy

The government’s plan to demand identification at the ballot box threatens to block significant numbers of eligible voters from participating in the next general election. Voter ID laws in the US have a proven record of undermining fair elections by disproportionately disenfranchising the most vulnerable groups in society. For all their talk of “taking back control”, it seems the Tories’ notion of sovereignty is void of any democratic content.

While the debate over safeguarding electoral integrity in the US has been dominated by the threat of foreign intervention, the 2016 presidential election was the first in 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. A 2013 US Supreme Court ruling eliminated key provisions in the VRA, a landmark achievement of the civil rights movement, that subjected changes to voting laws in states with a history of racial discrimination and voter intimidation to federal oversight.

The ruling energised the GOP’s nationwide efforts to impose voting restrictions such as photo ID requirements, and in the 2016 election fourteen states had new voting regulations in effect for the first time. In Wisconsin, one of seven states with strict photo ID laws, a study found that the number of people prevented from voting because they didn’t have an ID surpassed Trump’s margin of victory in the state. And researchers at the University of California San Diego concluded that “strict photo identification laws have a differentially negative impact on the turnout of Hispanics, Blacks, and mixed-race Americans in primaries and general elections”.

Last week, the government hailed its own experiment with voter ID as a success. Following up on a manifesto promise, voters in May’s local elections in Bromley, Gosport, Swindon, Watford and Woking were required to show proof of identity in order to cast their ballots. The Electoral Commission concluded that “turnout was unaffected” despite estimates indicating that up to 350 of the 1,036 people turned away for lacking proper identification failed to return to the polls.

Cat Smith, Labour’s shadow minister for voter engagement, has called on the government to end its rollout of the new scheme. “The fact that voters were denied their right to vote is proof that voter ID has no place in our democracy,“ she said.

The government touted the voter ID plan as a common sense step to “boost confidence in our democratic process and safeguard elections against fraud”. With another trial run scheduled for next year’s local elections, the Tories look poised to implement voter ID requirements nationally in the next general election.

This radical overhaul of the electoral system comes as there remains no evidence that widespread voter fraud is even taking place. There were just 28 allegations of voter impersonation in 2017, a year in which nearly 45 million votes were cast. Only one of these cases resulted in a conviction.

Despite the government’s reassurances, the case of the US shows that voter ID laws aren’t passed in a racially neutral, ahistorical vacuum. Unlike mainland Europe, where voters have access to national ID cards, voting would require expensive forms of identification, placing an undue burden on Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities and the poor. 3.5 million people stand to lose their vote in the next election because they don’t have an ID — that’s 7.5% of the electorate. To add insult to injury, the government has announced plans to increase the cost of passport applications from £72.50 to £85.

Fabricating a voter fraud crisis in order to push through sweeping reforms that block people who can’t afford IDs from participating in elections constitutes an assault on basic democratic norms and values. While Labour readies itself for a possible snap election, it’s urgent for the party to ramp up grassroots mobilisation efforts to inform voters about the threat posed by this Conservative government’s voter ID plan.

Universal suffrage is an indispensable component of a functioning democracy. It took the horror of Bloody Sunday in Selma for the US Congress to pass legislation nullifying draconian Jim Crow-era measures like literacy tests and grandfather clauses that denied African-Americans their fundamental right to vote. Labour has a vital stake in this historical struggle and now more than ever it must advance the kind of democratic culture needed as we face the chaos of Brexit.

James F. Kelly is a freelance writer and fact-checker based in Brighton. He specialises in US and UK politics.