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Mandatory voter ID damages trust in elections far more than it improves it, a new study suggests.
Academics at Goldsmiths, University of London, conducted 1,000 survey interviews at polling stations across elections held in the UK between 19 October 2023 and 1 May 2025, finding that around 2–3% of voters who turned up were unable to vote.
Of those who could vote, many knew of others who were not attending because they were aware they lacked the required ID proof, according to the research.
And only 13% of all respondents said the voter ID rules had increased their trust in elections whilst 35% stated it had decreased their trust in elections, citing the fact that so many had been excluded. The policy was introduced by the Conservative Government in 2022 – on the explicit premise it would increase trust in the integrity of elections.
Previous research found that the introduction of the new voter ID policy “prevented at least 16,000 voters from casting their ballots at polling stations at the 2024 general election, with many more of the estimated 2.1 million voters who did not own acceptable ID deciding not to participate due to the new regulations,” the authors noted.
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And the problem the law was designed to prevent, ‘personation’, saw only seven convicted cases between the years of 2010 and 2022.
The authors identified six most at-risk groups from the policy: under-25s, low-income individuals, eligible immigrant voters facing language and documentation barriers, those with gender/sexuality/marital status issues, those who were neurodiverse, and those with disabilities.
A separate study from academics Toby James and Alistair Clark had highlighted the low levels of attempted personation at two elections. Their survey of poll workers found that only 0.6% of those surveyed suspected a case of electoral fraud on the day, and only 3.9% said they had a person asking to vote whose identity they were unsure of.
The new Goldsmiths research also points to a 2024 Fieldhouse et al. study, based on the British Election Study between May 2023 and July 2024, identifying that ‘at the time of the 2023 and 2024 local elections in England, approximately one in twenty electors did not own any recognized voter identification, and this was concentrated in poorer and less educated groups and among supporters of left-leaning political parties’.
Former Cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg has, since the policy was introduced, admitted it was a form of “gerrymandering” to try and suppress the non-Conservative vote. However, he noted that it may have backfired as many older voters were disenfranchised.
Voters in Scotland, the North-East, North-West, and West Midlands were the least likely to own appropriate ID, and those in London and the East of England the most likely to.
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Worryingly, the Fieldhouse et al. study also found that almost four times as many voters did not even attempt to vote due to the new regulations (1.9% in May 2023 elections) than those who were turned away at polling stations (0.5%). The independent Electoral Commission found in its own interim analysis a higher figure, of approximately 4% of people who did not vote in the elections citing the photo ID requirements as the reason why.
“Evidence collected on polling day by Democracy Volunteers, the UK’s largest election observation group, showed that in May 2023 and the 2024 general election, those turned away were disproportionally likely to be ‘non-white passing’, comprising 53% and 47% of turnaways respectively,” the Golds…