[Accacin]

My country doesn't require voter ID at all, other than confirming a few details and most studies here has shown that requiring ID didn't cut down on fraud.

For me it's important that the barrier to voting is as low as possible, and we don't have a governement issued ID that is free.

[richardknop]

That should be solved by issuing a free government ID, not by compromising and creating a giant loophole when potentially citizens of other countries can vote in your election and there is no way to verify that.

[feintruled]

Not as easy as it sounds. I was in a Government office for some tax related reason and was in line behind some guys trying to apply for their 'electrical card' (sic, electoral). This is in N. Ireland, which unlike the rest of the UK requires ID to vote.

They were having to be talked through filling in the form only to hit a roadblock when it came to proof of address. After expressing their voluble disbelief at some length that the handwritten doctor's note they had would not suffice, they eventually left empty-handed. (Incidentally, they were only looking the card to use it for ID for flying, they had no interest in voting).

Now these guys were obviously jokers, but it shows you will need a certain degree of application and time to get even the most rudimentary of verifiable ID. Even the conscientious may find themselves not getting around to getting the ID before election and losing their vote.

[richardknop]

That's implementation problem, not an argument against making sure only eligible citizens can vote.

Why not have a national ID like in some European countries? Issue it at age of 15, you can go to a government office with parents when you are 15 and get your ID.

You can pass a sensible legislation for this. Have a grace period of 2 election cycles to allow all the people who want to vote enough time to get their ID (10 years is more than enough time to prove your address).

[bluGill]

Why do you need to have an address? What is wrong with being homeless?

[richardknop]

I was reacting to the parent comment. For some reason in Northern Ireland example cited there proof of address was required.

Government can issue IDs without proof of address. This is matter of implementation. For national election at least you shouldn't need it. For local elections it should be required.

[feintruled]

Governments can and do issue ID using whatever criteria they see fit. But the lesser the criteria the weaker the proof. I mean, you need a photo at least, right? And presumably some means of proving that photo is you (for passports in UK you have to get a doctor or similar person of authority to sign a declaration). So it's not such a simple matter.

[Accacin]

Like I said, studies shown that having an ID didn't change much. Plus, they already can! Commonwealth citizens can vote in UK elections pretty much as soon as they arrive.

[richardknop]

I question the results of these studies. I think it's very difficult to measure empirically how many people are cheating if it is not required to have voter ID / some sort of proof of your identity when voting.

[maxerickson]

Have you read the unnamed studies?

Presumably at least a few of them anticipate the easy problems and design a methodology appropriate to dealing with them.

For instance, if voter ID is highly effective, you'd expect much higher rates of double votes under a given registration in places that don't require it (unless the cheaters are masters of anticipating registrants that aren't going to vote).

[gbrown]

If you're primarily worried about attacks which can modify the result of elections, your threat model is broken.

[richardknop]

What should you be primarily worried about? It's like serving your e-commerce website over HTTP because there have been very few security breaches. Why not get a certificate and use HTTPS? It's a massive improvement in security for a very small cost.

[gbrown]

Not analogous,because attacks relying on coordinating large numbers of people (with a high rate of detection) simply doesn't scale. We should be worried about electronic attacks on voting infrastructure, political attacks on districts, political attacks on the registration process etc.