Voter ID Pilots for the Local Government Elections in May 2018

Voter ID pilots for the local government elections in May 2018

Voters in five local authorities will be required to show ID before they can vote in the local government elections in May 2018.

The voter ID pilots will take place in Woking, Gosport, Bromley, Watford and Swindon.

These local authorities have volunteered to pilot voter ID and they, along with the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators, and a wider number of local authorities as part of a reference group, have been instrumental in designing and shaping how voter ID will work in each area.

Different areas require different forms of ID in order to vote and RNIB recommends that you check with your local council to find out what you’ll need to take in order to vote.

RNIB completely understand and respect the need to make sure that voting processes are secure, but fear that introducing voter ID is potentially a further way of disenfranchising blind and partially sighted people.

Blind and partially sighted people don’t usually have driving licences, and having a passport is increasingly expensive at a time when benefits are frozen and disabled people still face barriers to getting work. Research undertaken by RNIB highlighted that when blind and partially sighted people do have passports there are some fears around the security of carrying that or a birth certificate around with them in order to go and vote.

In respect of the pilots that will run for the local elections in May, RNIB worries that not enough has been done to communicate to people what is required of them when it comes to ID and voting and we’re unsure whether adequate equality impact assessments were done as no reasonable adjustments seem to have been put in place.

Our research has highlighted that polling cards are still inaccessible and often get mistaken for junk mail and put in the bin.

We understand that in theory, no one who is eligible to vote will be prevented from doing so, but the alternative where people must complete a form and get a special permission in order to vote adds in another inaccessible layer to democracy and makes it more complicated for blind and partially sighted people to vote in the same way as their sighted peers.

rnib.org.uk