As someone who comes from a country where we do require photo ID for voting, not requiring one feels absurd, so I asked the same question. Apparently in the US, there is a part of the population that doesn't normally get photo ID and that part is mostly poor people and minorities and photo ID laws are used as means of disenfranchisement, similar to having the voting days during business days (when many people can't come to vote) or having voting stations far away in an area with limited public transport options.

Where I live in Finland, the police will actually grant you a temporary photo ID only for voting if you don't have one, although most people have passports. There are early voting stations in basically every post office for a week and the main voting day is always on a Sunday. No excuse to miss voting.

I've only missed one voting during my life, at a time when I was living in another country and there was no consulate in the part of the country I was in. Nowadays there's also the option of mail-in voting when outside the country, I don't know if it wasn't a thing back then or I just didn't know.

That's not to say I didn't want some improvements in our system: I'd like to see ranked choice voting or something similar here, there are some smaller parties I've been voting and it seems they seldom have a chance.

Voting ID requirements have not been universally seen as a good thing in the UK, there’s been a lot of opposition to it.

There is no national ID in the UK, instead there is a patchwork of secondary ID systems such as passports, drivers licenses, travel cards etc. In most cases they have a monetary cost or are not universally available.

It’s been seen as an attempt at voter suppression as many poorer British people may not have suitable ID. The rules also reject many forms of ID commonly held by younger voters, while accepting a wider range of ID held be older voters. There is supposed to be a free voting ID available but implantation has been left to local councils and has been criticised as hard to access.

The US (mostly the trending fascist party) does whatever possible to make sure the least amount of people possible get the opportunity to vote and for the people who do vote, make sure their vote does not count as much as possible. It also varies per state.

• not giving out a national identification card, but then requiring an identification card to vote

• voting districts with crazy borders to make absolute certain that the far right gets the most representatives possible https://www.maproomblog.com/xq/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wapost-gerrymander-1024x687.jpg

• reducing the amount of voting centers every year in areas like major cities that vote more left so that the people would have to travel an hour or more to vote and without a car, it is almost impossible

• Voting is not a public holiday and many states do not allow voting by mail. Combined with the before point removes many poor people's ability to vote at all

• there is a right wing effort to remove as many left leaning votors as possible from registration for minor errors

• Armed party members at elections recently to intimidate voters, especially if they "look like the left demographic"

• the "electoral college" which can just decide to not cast the vote that actually decides elections for the candidates that the citizens voted for

It is really batshit crazy over there. It seems like the right gets away with all of this crazy stuff and then when the left is back in power, almost nothing is done to change it back with regards to voting.

It's bad in the USA because they have an aversion to all forms of registration.

It's unnecessary in most of Europe because they already have functional registries.

I don't know enough about UK election procedures to figure out why they thought it was necessary. It's probably not, but it's easy points for someone wanting to signal that they're doing something against the fictional illegal immigrants who are supposedly voting en masse whenever the right wing politicians don't get their way..

It isn't. There was no evidence of voting fraud but it does reduce the number of people who vote, and specifically older people who vote conservative are more likely to have photo ID via bus passes, etc, while younger voters in poor areas are likely to have none.

You can apply for ID free, but that requires effort that a lot of people can't be bothered with, especially when they constantly being told that "both sides are as bad as each other".

In Europe, people have an ID since they are born. And, you need it to go to your neighboring countries which are never far away. Not having an ID is quite rare. You even have countries delivering it for free.

Also note that passports are valid IDs.

The Tories who were in power pushed it based on right wing conspiracy theories about immigrants because vulnerable populations least likely to have government documentation vote overwhelmingly labour.

It didn't really work though because old people also often let their passport and driving license lapse, department of work and pensions also already uses heavy handed documentation requirements as a way of fucking over people with mental health issues, criminal records, poverty etc who are less likely to have ID so the amount of people with ID in those groups is uncharacteristically high.

So yeah it's a bit of a nothing really, reduces voters on all sides but mostly the left and doesn't really seem to do much else.

I wonder how Boris feels about the current crop of carbrained Conservative candidates, given that supporting bikes was one of the few good things he did as mayor.

This is only really an issue if it's not free and convenient to get one, as in huge swaths of the US.

The UK never needed ID, there was no evidence of voter fraud happening at polling stations. So voter ID was introduced.

There has been evidence of voter fraud happening via postal votes where no id is required.

The UK doesn't have any government ID, only ID by proxy like drivers license and passport. So poorer people and the elderly are less likely to have photo id. Only one group got an exception - the one that voted conservative.

The previous Scottish conservative leader committed electoral crimes live on TV. There was no consequences. But know people are further disincentivesed to vote, despite very little evidence of people fraudulent casting votes claiming to be someone else.