Democracy 101 - Registering to Vote with Dr Ben Stanford

Resource type: Podcast

Democracy 101 is the monthly podcast series from Cumberland Lodge giving a comprehensive introduction to democracy. In this episode, we speak to Dr Ben Stanford, Senior Lecturer in Law at Liverpool John Moores University, exploring how you can register to vote, what you need to take with you to the polling station, and the issues surrounding it.

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Cumberland Lodge · Democracy 101 – Registering to Vote with Dr Ben Stafford

Episode transcript

00:00 – 00:33

Munny Purba (MP)

Hello and welcome to Democracy 101, a monthly podcast series by Cumberland Lodge offering a comprehensive introduction to the workings of democracy and its significance in the world today. In this episode, we are joined by Dr Ben Stanford, a Senior Lecturer in Law at Liverpool John Moores University, with his research focusing on democracy and electoral rights. This podcast explores issues of voter registration and voter identification.

00:33 – 00:58

For those listening in the UK, the deadline to register to vote in the 2024 general election is Tuesday 18th of June. You can register to vote online at Gov.uk/Register-to-vote. We now go to my conversation with Doctor Stanford. Thank you so much, Ben, for joining us for this episode of the Democracy 101 podcast.

00:58 – 01:03

A really important and interesting topic around voter ID and registration.

01:03 – 01:09

Dr Ben Stanford (BS)

Thanks for having me. This is an issue of really passionate about. So anything I can do to help spread the word.

01:09 – 01:25

So I think we can start with a fun question that we like to do with some of our guests. And the one that we’ve got for you is, given the fact that you’re based up in Liverpool and we’re talking about ID identity, what do you think most people identify Liverpool with?

01:25 – 01:56

Oh great question. Well, I suppose it has to be music and in particular The Beatles. Everyone knows Liverpool for The Beatles back in the 60s in particular, and generally music. We obviously hosted Eurovision last year and Taylor Swift is coming to Liverpool very soon, I believe. So it’s all about music in Liverpool. And the close second I suppose is football, whether you’re red or blue, I won’t, I won’t say which side I am, but, yeah, football is definitely, up there as well.

01:56 – 02:21

Thank you. That gives us a great idea that all the great things up in Liverpool. Thank you so much. So it’s an important time. At the moment, we’re really getting close to a general election and voter and voter ID and registration has really been an important part of this year’s general election conversation, the rhetoric around it. So I wonder if we can talk a bit about what that really means.

02:21 – 02:28

So what is voter ID and what do we need to do in terms of registering to vote?

02:28 – 02:54

Great. So they are, I guess, two very separate issues, but two essential things that everyone now needs to do to be able to vote. So I guess the first stage is simply registering to vote. Now this is a very manual process. It’s not automatic. Everyone has to do it themselves. It’s called individual registration now. So yeah, the easiest way to go online the government website, fill out the form, provide your details.

02:54 – 03:13

And the deadline for that is Tuesday the 18th of June so that’s to register to vote simply to be on the electoral roll and have the potential to vote. Obviously, that it’s up to you how you want to vote. You might want to do it by post. You might want to do it in person in polling stations. But recently it was just two years ago.

03:13 – 03:37

The Elections Act 2022. It’s introduced this new requirement of photo identification. So this has been going on in Northern Ireland for quite a few years for different reasons. But now in England, Wales and Scotland, everyone is going to have to show photo ID to vote in the general election. So really important that you get the correct form of ID to be able to vote.

03:37 – 03:52

Thank you. This is really important to mention, that it’s kind of a new thing and some people may not have known about it. So thank you for bringing light to that. You say that you mentioned the appropriate forms of ID, so what does that look like? What does that mean to have the appropriate forms of ID?

03:52 – 04:14

Yes. So there’s a few options. The list isn’t particularly long, but hopefully most people have got at least one form. Most common types that people are using the past year or so are passports and driving licenses. A big problem with that is obviously they’re quite expensive to get right. Passports. Is it 70, 80, 90 pounds now? Maybe? A driving license?

04:14 – 04:35

I’m not sure exactly, but it’ll cost you money to at least apply for it and get it. One thing that is now available though, is it’s what we call a voter authority certificate. It’s a free form of ID that the government’s introduced. But again, you’ve got to apply for that. And the deadline for that is Wednesday the 26th of June.

04:36 – 05:02

So that’s a free form of ID but there are other forms as well. So as I’ve said, passport, driving license, this voter authority certificate, you can use a biometric immigration document, a proof of age standard scheme card. And I believe the NUS are giving them out free to university students. So that’s that’s a really good resource. Ministry of Defence ID cards, some concessionary travel passes.

05:02 – 05:23

But these are mostly for older voters and some disabled voters, and disabled persons blue badge. So there’s a few, there’s a range. But if we think about young people in particular, the range is really quite limited. And apart from the NUS helping out with the pass card, the options are a bit limited and quite expensive in some forms.

05:23 – 05:40

Yeah. So I think what you mentioned there is that there could be lots of options. However, you have to really check to make sure you’re getting the right one that would be appropriate for you. And I know there’s also been a conversation around passports. You can have a passport that is out of date, but as long as it looks like you, you can also use it.

05:40 – 05:46

But we have to make sure that our passport pictures look like what we look like now, which is quite an interesting part.

05:46 – 06:08

Yeah, yeah. And that’s good. That has been and will be a challenge for some people, particularly people if the trans community, some people of certain religions, well will struggle to prove their identity. And that has been the case in the past couple of years in the local elections, because again, we’ve not really seen voter ID being used on a big scale yet.

06:08 – 06:37

And when I say big scale, I mean a general election with tens of millions of people voting. We’ve only seen voter ID in small, low-key elections, like the local elections, where turnout was really quite low, unfortunately. And even in those elections, we’ve seen hundreds of people rejected thousands, in fact, thousands rejected. So in a general election, when there’s 4 or 5 times as many people turning out to vote, the problems could be a lot, a lot worse, unfortunately

06:37 – 06:58

And that’s quite important when it comes to thinking about what the election might look like. So when you’re talking about certain communities being affected massively by this change in legislation, I wonder if you can talk a bit about what you found in your research in terms of who that might affect most, or specifically if there’s any indication of how that might affect young voters?

06:58 – 07:24

Yes. So some groups are definitely disproportionately affected by voter ID, definitely the young. They are one of the groups that are most kind of exposed by this, you know, that can be for various reasons. It can be because, you know, you’ve never needed a passport before, you’ve never needed a driving license before. Maybe you change your address quite a lot and therefore ID is out of date, wrong address listed, and so on.

07:24 – 07:48

Loads of problems there. It’s affected older people as well for maybe similar reasons. They’ve not travelled in a long time. Passport has gone missing or whatever. Also certain disabled people uneven people from underrepresented groups as well as BAME community, for example. So lots of different groups are being disproportionately affected by this. But all for different reasons.

07:48 – 08:05

Yeah, really interesting to think about the dynamics of what this means for certain people, what and what the vote might mean for them. And but also, I think it’s interesting and important to think about why this legislation, about having ID in order to vote came in and why that decision was made. So I wonder if you can talk a bit about that as well.

08:05 – 08:26

Right. Okay. So well, the idea for voter ID, it’s been around for a long time, a couple of decades, really, and it goes back to Northern Ireland back in the 1980s when it was first introduced. But in terms of England, Wales, and Scotland, this only really came into being proposed around 2015. That sort of time. It was a couple of pilot scheme.

08:26 – 09:01

So trials in 2017 and 2018 very low-key just to try it out. But the basic argument for introducing voter ID was to stop voter fraud and in particular, impersonation. So basically people turning up to polling stations pretending to be or claiming to be somebody else and using their vote. Now, proving that is is pretty difficult, you know, and unless the real person turns up and their vote has already been used, that’s really the only way we know. But allegations of voter fraud were tiny.

09:02 – 09:22

And prosecutions for voter fraud were even smaller. You could really count them on one hand over the space of 5 or 10 years. So the problem of voter fraud is tiny, undoubtedly. And well, that was seen as the reason, the justification for introducing it to make people feel more confident about the electoral process.

09:22 – 09:33

So there were certain reasons behind it. But I wonder if you maybe can also think about some of the conversations and discussions around this. I know it’s been a bit of a contentious argument.

09:34 – 10:09

Of course, so a lot of this is very similar connotations with the United States of America, where voter ID is really contentious there. The idea that it’s introduced to suppress the votes of certain people that will support certain parties. So very similar arguments over here in the UK, the idea that it was introduced to suppress the vote of opposition parties, essentially, particularly younger voters or transient voters, ones, people who move around a lot, even homeless voters, you know, they’re really going to struggle with this sort of thing.

10:09 – 10:15

So, yeah, there’s been a lot of allegations that this has been a form of voter suppression.

10:15 – 10:36

But also, I think given what you just mentioned, that it’s really important if we care about having their voices heard and, you know, using that right to vote, we need to make sure that we’re using and bringing our ID and also understanding that we need to be registered. It’s not an automatic thing. So I also think maybe we should talk a little bit about that too.

10:36 – 10:51

So the idea that when we turn 18, we’re not automatically going to be on the electoral roll. We have to go out of our way and manually do it. So why is that the system here, rather than us just automatically being able to vote.

10:51 – 11:18

Right. Well, historically we used to have a household registration scheme where one person, usually the oldest male. This is going back to the Victorian times. So the oldest male the father, usually the man of the house, as it were, would register everyone that lived within a household. But that changed. Now we have this individual scheme where everyone must register for themselves.

11:18 – 11:45

Now the reason why we don’t have automatic voter registration, I don’t know exactly why we don’t, but the arguments or the reasons are usually it’s to allow for maximum autonomy of individuals. You know, it’s it is for every individual to decide for themselves whether to register. Usually or historically, there’s been a reluctance, I suppose, for the government to have access to all of our information.

11:46 – 12:06

So there’s quite a few reasons why we don’t have automatic registration, the historic ones, but also it’s it would be quite complex now to introduce a scheme like this. You know, it couldn’t really be done overnight. It would take a lot of effort to introduce it. But it does happen abroad, so it’s not impossible. There are loads of examples out there.

12:06 – 12:29

You know, people have suggested, for example, once you’re given your National Insurance number at the age of 16, why not automatically register people to vote? So that’s going to get young people involved straight away. Or even more signposting. So when you apply for a passport or you’re applying to university, you will be sent instructions on how to register to vote.

12:29 – 12:33

So more can be done. Definitely to improve this.

12:33 – 12:55

Yeah, I think it’s interesting just to think about what could change potentially and what could make it easier, more accessible, and just thinking about reimagining the system. And if we had the possibility to, what would we do? I think it’s it’s really quite interesting to think about this, not that that will necessarily change overnight or even in the next couple of years, but just, you know, some food for thought.

12:55 – 13:11

And I think we’ve talked about the ways in which we can vote and why we need to go out and make sure we manually register. But what are the different forms of voting? At the start? We did mention a little bit, but I wonder if we can go through the different types of, or the different ways in which we can vote.

13:11 – 13:35

Yes. So I suppose there are three main ways least or the three most common ways. So voting in a polling station. So you go personally on the day of the election between the hours of 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. and obviously now you now need to confirm your name, address, show ID, then you given your ballot paper and, you know, fill it out and put it in the box.

13:35 – 13:54

Now that’s the way. I don’t know if the majority of people do that still, but millions of people definitely do. It’s the way I do it. I like that the smell of the pencil and then in the being in the polling station. The other really common way is by post. So obviously you need to register to vote as usual and register to vote by post.

13:54 – 14:22

And roughly two weeks before the day of the election, you’ll be sent your ballot paper in the post. You’ll have a couple of days to think about it. Fill it out, and return it. So that’s a really common way. And the other way, which is less common, but it’s possible is voting by proxy. So maybe you’re, you know, out of the country at the time or for whatever other reason, can’t vote in person.

14:22 – 14:36

So this will be where somebody can vote on your behalf, essentially. But obviously that’s going to be quite strict strict conditions. They’ll need ID and so on, and you’ll need to approve it. But those are probably the three most common ways of voting.

14:36 – 14:55

I think that’s helpful because often as you’re coming up to that age, to be able to vote, it all seems a bit confusing and complicated and different deadlines and that sort of thing. So I think it’s really important to take your time to learn about what the different weights of what it means to you, and what’s the easiest way for you as well.

14:55 – 15:25

Like you said, some people won’t have the ability to go in person and vote, perhaps because of working hours or they’re not in the place that they’ve been registered to vote because they’re at university and various different reasons. So just understanding that there are three ways in person, postal, and proxy, it’s really important to know, I think. I wonder if there was anything else that you think it’s interesting or that you wanted to mention, or parts of your research that could really help us understanding a bit more about voter ID and registration.

15:25 – 15:44

I mean, I could say a few things here, really. First of all, with young people in mind in particular really here we’ve got this lethal combination of three factors at the moment. So young people are the least likely to be registered. They are the least likely to vote. And now, unfortunately, the least likely to be aware of voter ID.

15:44 – 16:15

So putting those three factors together, there’s a real risk here that like we’ve seen for forever, unfortunately, the expression of preferences will be the least taken into account in the election. So that’s something we really, really want to avoid and to improve. What else? I mean, look into the future. I’ve already said about the types of voter ID now these really do need to be extended. If voter ID is here to stay, fine, but at least improve and extend the range.

16:15 – 16:41

So things like a university ID card, why can’t that be a form of ID? You know, they don’t just give them out to anyone. You’ve got to be a registered student. Maybe allowing for a young person’s railcard. So the 18 to 25 Railcard. I wish I was young enough to have one still, unfortunately not. But that’s another, that’s another form of ID that really should be considered. The voter authority certificate that I mentioned to you.

16:41 – 17:10

Now, that’s a printed A4 piece of paper. Now who really carries around with them an A4 document these days? There’s got to be a way of making that digital, or at least issuing some sort of card that you can put in your wallet so, you know, changing, expanding the types of ID needs to be looked at. And if I can just give you a, I don’t want to scare people, but just to show you tell you how many people are actually being turned away at elections.

17:10 – 17:41

So the local elections last year, 2023, fairly low key compared to the general election coming up. But the Electoral Commission, which is the UK’s watchdog for elections, they estimated that 14,000 people across England were rejected for lacking ID, and that’s likely to be a low estimate because some people won’t even attend a polling station. They’ll be asked outside the polling station, do you have ID and they might just walk away so they’re not even recorded.

17:41 – 18:06

So 14,000 being rejected is really an underestimate. It’s a low number compared to what the reality is. And Liverpool. So the city of Liverpool, last year the local elections over 500 people turned away. And at nearly 250 didn’t even return with ID. Now just a few hundred might sound like a small number, but that is enough to sway a seat.

18:06 – 18:26

It’s enough for one person to win. Some seats in the general election coming up, they will be won by a few dozen votes, a few hundred votes. So if hundreds of people being turned away, that is enough to sway an election easily. So these are just some of the examples that show why this is a problem.

18:26 – 18:48

Thank you for illuminating us on that, because I think sometimes it seems abstract and we think, oh, it’s not really going to make a difference if I’m if I don’t vote or if I don’t have the right ID, but really it does and it really can. So it’s important for us to know, it’s important for us to understand what it means for us personally and have enough information as to what we need to bring on that day.

18:48 – 19:11

And even before that when we’re registering.

Absolutely.

So thank you so much for giving us a bit of an understanding, a bit of the numbers and also some, some options that we have there. So I hope that’s helpful for people out there that are thinking of voting. And if you’re not a voting age yet, thinking about when you are, how you can best prepare yourself, that’s it.

19:11 – 19:20

And just remember, you can still register to vote. You can register. It doesn’t mean you’ll be able to vote, but at least be prepared for when the next election comes around.

19:20 – 19:41

Thanks for listening. Don’t forget, you can register to vote at Gov.uk/Register-to-vote and the deadline is Tuesday 18th of June. You can find out more about the work we do at Cumberland Lodge by visiting Cumberlandlodge.ac.uk. You can also find us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and Tick Tock at Cumberland Lodge.