Your editorial on the serious dangers of insisting on voter ID sets out its many dangers (The Guardian view on voting rights: don’t import US-style suppression, 9 March).
There is, however, no need to detail its potential effects, nor a need for any guesswork. We have the clear evidence of election turnout in the 18 Northern Ireland constituencies before and after the introduction of compulsory ID.
The last election without voter ID was in 2001, and in the first election after its introduction, in 2005, turnout was down in every seat. Nor has the passage of time improved the situation: at the last election in 2019, the average reduction compared with 2001 was approximately 6.5%. That is a massive loss of voting rights.
Electoral law already contains all the protection necessary to secure the ballot and to prevent personation. All that is required is for political parties to have the capacity to make use of the existing provision.
Michael Meadowcroft
Leeds
• I noted a week ago an article about Tory-run Woking council wanting to impose a “request” for postal vote ID for their local elections (Woking council accused of discouraging vulnerable voters, 1 March). And now we have the general election version of the same thing (Warning over photo ID law change for UK-wide and English elections, 9 March).
The reason for this joined-up political activity on the part of the Tories has nothing to do with voter fraud and everything to do with starting to make it as difficult as possible for people unlikely to support the Tories to be able to vote in the first place.
This is straight out of US Republican party playbook and has been proven to be successful. It also suggests that, as the next general election approaches, there will be a reduction – purely on cost grounds, of course – in the number of polling stations needing to be provided, particularly in Labour areas.
Gary Bennett
Exeter
• Police have fined Scottish fishermen, and a protester about nurses’ pay, for taking part in political demonstrations (and this at a time when it seems perfectly acceptable for the prime minister and his entourage to visit schools, hospitals, labs and elsewhere for photo opportunities, for little reason other than to boost him politically).
It will be a particular outrage if the voter ID bill – which restricts the right to vote of many and seems deliberately designed to give the Conservatives an unfair advantage – is rushed through while legitimate protests by and on behalf of those affected are still banned, with Britain behaving exactly in the manner of many authoritarian states that Boris Johnson himself has condemned.
Adrian Cosker
Hitchin, Hertfordshire
• Concern has been expressed about Scotland becoming a one-party country, given the SNP’s dominance. Of greater concern should be what is happening in England. Taken together, voter suppression via polling station voter ID requirements, the decision to extend the vote to Britons living abroad for over (as well as under) 15 years, the likelihood of an imminent Scottish departure from the UK, and the possibility of reviving a gerrymandered reduction in the number of parliamentary constituencies would create a one-party state in England. Opposition parties need to take note of this probability, and respond appropriately.
Richard Ellis
Derby
