Voter ID

Voter ID is where a voter has to produce a piece of photographic identification in a polling station to prove who they are before being issued with a ballot paper. It is intended to prevent the electoral crime of personation, where someone steals someone’s vote by pretending to be them at a polling station.

There have been voter ID requirements in Northern Ireland for all elections since 1985, and photo ID since 2003. Voter ID for the rest of the UK was introduced in 2023 by the Elections Act 2022, but not for all elections.

Which elections need voter ID?

• UK parliament elections and recall petitions
• All local elections in England – council, mayoral, parish and local referendums
• All elections in Northern Ireland
• Police and crime commissioner elections in England and Wales

Local council elections in Scotland and Wales and elections to the Scottish and Welsh parliaments are not covered by voter ID rules.

What ID can you use?

Voters can use passports, full and provisional driving licences, Proof of Age Standards Scheme (PASS) cards, Blue badges, and some concessionary travel cards. The full list is available on the Electoral Commission website: Accepted forms of photo ID.

People without an existing acceptable form of voter ID can apply online or by post for a free Voter Authority Certificate (VAC). The VAC will display the name and a passport style photo of a voter.

The ID used in a polling station must be original, not a photo on someone’s phone or a photocopy. It does not matter if a document has expired, as long as the photo is a good likeness.

Voters may request their ID is inspected in private.

Impact of voter ID

The introduction of voter ID in Great Britain was controversial.

Critics said the level of personation did not warrant the risk of preventing people who might not have ID from voting. The Conservative Government argued the trust-based nature of voting made personation difficult to detect and continued to be a risk to the integrity of elections. A report by the Local Government Information Unit in 2023 highlighted electoral administrators thought personation was not a major issue but noted that before the introduction of voter ID some said it was almost impossible to detect personation fraud at a polling station.

In 2022, the last local elections in England before the introduction of voter ID there were, there were 7 cases of alleged personation in a polling station. None of the allegations resulted in any action.

In 2023 there were two allegations of polling station personation. Both of the cases of resulted in the police taking no further action following investigation because they found that no offence had been committed.

Data for 2024 is likely to be made available at the end of March 2025.

Changes to the voter ID scheme

The Labour Party opposed the introduction of voter ID during the passage of the Elections Act 2022. However, it did not pledge to scrap the scheme if it won the 2024 general election.

Instead, the Labour Government has said it will review the scheme and its impact on voters. It has said it will also take account of the Electoral Commission’s recommendations and publish the result of the review sometime in 2025.

In the meantime, it has added the Armed Forces Veterans Card to the list of approved ID for Great Britain from 1 May 2025. Similar changes will be made for elections in Northern Ireland in time for the next scheduled elections there.