Warning voter ID could hurt police election turnout

Showing your driving licence is one way to prove your identity to polling officials

There are warnings that requiring photo ID for the first time for elections in Wales next month could reduce turnout.

ID will be needed for police and crime commissioners elections, with UK ministers arguing it will help prevent fraud.

But the Electoral Reform Society is warning it is unnecessary and damaging.

Voter ID was introduced in England for last year's local elections and will also be used for the next UK general election.

Voters in Northern Ireland have needed photo ID since 2003, where opinion polls had previously shown that many of them believed electoral fraud to be a widespread problem.

So what are these elections in Wales, what are the arguments for changing the process and how will voter ID work?

What are the police and crime commissioner elections?

Four police and crime commissioners, or PCCs, will be elected in Wales on 2 May, one for each of the police force areas - South Wales, Gwent, Dyfed-Powys, and North Wales.

They are responsible for overseeing and holding to account local police forces and setting the annual budget for their force area.

They can appoint and dismiss chief constables, but are not responsible for the forces' day-to-day operational decisions.

All four main political parties in Wales are putting up candidates for the elections.

It is the fourth time these polls have been held, but the first time voters in these elections have been asked to prove they are who they say they are.

PCC elections are also taking place in much of England.

• Who is standing in Wales' police elections?

Why is voter ID being brought in?

The Conservative UK government, which runs the police and crime commissioner elections, says it is to prevent people pretending to be someone else.

But the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) has said the change is not needed and that elections have gone perfectly well in the past without people having to prove who they are.

It has even previously warned the new system could be a "calculated effort" to make voting harder for some citizens.

ERS chief executive Darren Hughes told this Sunday's Politics Wales programme: "A lot of the countries who do this sort of thing do so because they have a problem where people arrive at a polling station and ask for a ballot paper and pretend to be someone else.

"They impersonate another voter and in order to stop that voter ID is used. But in the UK, that's not been the experience of electoral administration at all.

"In fact, in 2019, which was a year we had lots of elections, we had local elections, general elections, remember, we had the European Parliamentary elections as well.

"There were tens of millions of ballot papers that were cast across all of those elections, and there were only two convictions for personation."

There is much disagreement over the merits of requiring voter ID for elections in Britain

Is there any indication that requiring voter ID can reduce turnout?

Yes, "significantly" and "consistently", according to Prof Petra Schleiter from Oxford University, based on evidence from last year's elections in England.

"Exactly by what amount is difficult to tell, because, depending on which data source you look at the estimates vary slightly, but anywhere between 1 and 5.5% are our best estimates," she said.

"We find that negative effect on turnout consistently… this reform had a significant and negative effect on people's ability to participate in the elections."

How has the UK government defended the change?

Ministers say it is crucial the public has confidence in the electoral system.

Before last year's local elections in England, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said ID checks would make sure elections were "high-integrity processes".

Before the ID requirement was trialled in councils in England in 2018, the government said it would "ensure the integrity" of the electoral system.

For the past six weeks, the elections watchdog, the Electoral Commission, has been running a public awareness campaign to tell voters they will need photo ID to vote in May's elections.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said: "As recommended by international election watchdogs, we introduced a requirement to show photographic identification for voting in person across Great Britain, in line with the longstanding arrangements in Northern Ireland.

"We are committed to ensuring everyone can have their say in our democracy and the Electoral Commission will continue to conduct public awareness campaigns ahead of each set of relevant polls.

"The vast majority of voters in the polling station - 99.75% - cast their vote successfully at the local elections in England last May."

What ID can voters use to prove they are who they say they are?

The main ones are your passport or driving licence, but bus passes for disabled people or older people are also on the list.

You can even use an expired ID, so long as the picture still looks like you do.

If you do not have any of these, you can apply for a Voter Authority Certificate, or you can vote by post.

The Electoral Commission has said the list of acceptable IDs should be longer.

When are the deadlines here?

The deadline for registering to vote is Tuesday 16 April.

The deadline to apply for a Voter Authority Certificate is 24 April.

What sort of turnout would we normally expect in these elections?

Turnout was pretty good at the last two police and crime commissioner elections in Wales, which coincided with Senedd polls.

In 2016, Wales' force areas had the highest turnout in England and Wales - Dyfed-Powys (48.9%), South Wales (46.6%), North Wales (41.6%) and Gwent (39.4%).

The lowest turnouts were Durham (17.4%), Cleveland (19.7%) and Leicestershire (19.8%).

Similarly in 2021, the highest turnout was in Dyfed-Powys (50.6%), North Wales (45.4%), South Wales (43.9%) and Gwent (41%).

But this time, unlike in England where local elections elections are taking place again, Wales' PCC elections are happening on their own.

This was the case previously at the first police commissioner polls in 2012. The turnout then was just 14.9% across Wales.

• You can see more about voter ID and the PCC elections on Politics Wales, on BBC One Wales on Sunday 14 April at 10:00 BST and then on iPlayer