Time to bite the ballot
Peter Facey writes in on the Guardian Comment is Free site about the publication of Stuart Wilks-Heeg’s report on UK elections:
One temptation the government must resist is to respond to demands for greater ballot security by waving the national identity card in our faces. Sadly, I would not be at all surprised if the government were to insist that, in future, voters will have to produce their “voluntary” identity cards at the polling station.
Yet, as Wilks-Heeg points out, the system works perfectly well in Northern Ireland by allowing people to use any form of photo ID. Most use their driver’s licence or passport, while there is the option of applying for a basic photographic identity card specifically for voting purposes. Such a scheme can be introduced inexpensively and quickly. By contrast, the national identity card is now due to take more than a decade to roll out across the country – and that is assuming no future government scraps the scheme. We need action now.
