Policy Background Voter Identification
Under the present voting procedure rules, voters at polling stations in England, Scotland and Wales are asked to confirm (i) if they are the person registered at a particular address on the electoral register and (ii) if they have already voted. This is effectively the only check that takes place relating to the identity of electors. The law requires polling clerks to call out the name of electors before they are issued with a ballot paper so objections can be made if the person is identified by someone else present as not being who they claim to be. This is no longer consistently done and, in any event, people present in a polling station are no longer likely to know everyone else in their local area. These measures are therefore outdated and no longer fit for purpose as a means of checking the identity of voters and avoiding personation. Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland voters have been required to produce personal identification before voting in polling stations since 1985, with photographic identification being required since 2003.
	In August 2016, Sir (now Lord) Eric Pickles as the Government’s Anti-Corruption Champion published a review into electoral fraud entitled Securing the Ballot  ("the Pickles Report"), issuing a number of recommendations designed to address electoral fraud and to strengthen the integrity and security of voting.
	In the report, Lord Pickles noted that the statutory questions which may be asked of voters under the current legislation were both basic and optional and in practice rarely used in polling stations. The report also points out that people could be ‘coached’ to commit personation (assuming the identity of another person with the intention to deceive) and could overcome that check. As a result, one of the final recommendations made in the review was for the Government to consider the options for electors to have to produce personal identification before voting at polling stations in Great Britain, and that the Government may wish to pilot different methods of identification.
	This recommendation was supported by and echoed other recommendations advanced by the Electoral Commission in its 2014 report Electoral fraud in the UK  , which concluded that there should be a requirement for electors across Great Britain to present an acceptable form of identification prior to voting at the polling station. In addition, reports of their observation of the 2010 and 2015 UK Parliamentary General Elections, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s (OSCE), Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) both recommended the introduction of more robust mechanisms for identification of voters, citing the use of voter identification in Northern Ireland as an example.
	The Government accepted the recommendation and ran pilot schemes trialling different methods of identification, which took place during local elections in England in May 2018 and 2019. Data from the pilot evaluations in 2018 and 2019 showed that the requirement to show identification increased voter confidence in the elections process. The Conservative Party manifestos of 2017 and 2019 committed to introducing voter identification for voting at polling stations. The Act delivers this commitment, and on 6 January 2022 the Government published a policy statement  which sets out more detail on the implementation plans for voter identification policy.
	As stated above, Northern Ireland has had the requirement to produce identification in place since 1985. In respect of Northern Ireland, the Act makes some amendments to the voter identification process by requiring the Chief Electoral Officer (who is an independent Crown appointment, and the Returning Officer and Registration Officer for all 18 constituencies in Northern Ireland) to provide every polling station in Northern Ireland with lists containing the dates of birth of all voters allotted to vote at that station. This will facilitate compliance with an existing legal duty on polling station staff in Northern Ireland to check the dates of birth of voters in cases where the apparent age of the voter compared to the date supplied at registration or on the proxy vote application form, raises a reasonable doubt as to whether the voter is the elector or proxy they represent themselves to be. The Act also mirrors for Northern Ireland some of the provisions being introduced for Great Britain.