I disagree with the noble Lord, in the sense that I am talking about the rhetoric, and the context and reason for this, whether it is happening on a state-by-state basis or nationally. What is behind it is in my second quote, from Max Feldman at the Brennan Center for Justice, who says that
“claims of widespread fraud are nothing more than old wine in new bottles. President Trump and his allies have long claimed, without evidence, that different aspects of our elections are infected with voter fraud. Before mail voting, they pushed similar false narratives about noncitizen voting, voter impersonation, and double voting”.
To pick up the noble Lord’s point about people’s concerns about the voting system, these days we see a great deal of sharing and cross-fertilisation of concerns on social media. Rhetoric spread by powerful, well-funded forces will have an impact on people’s views, as we have seen in other contexts.
The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, suggested that people were coming perilously close to suggesting that the purpose behind voter ID was voter suppression. I am not going to come “perilously close” to it; I believe that that is the case.
The second point I want to make concerns history. I do not believe that we are guaranteed to gradually progress positively into the future, but look at the trends. In 1832 and 1867, the Great Reform Acts spread the right to vote among men. In 1918 and 1928, women got the right to vote. In 1969, and implemented in 1970, the voting age was reduced from 21 to 18. That is all heading in the direction of greater engagement. In Oral Questions
earlier we saw some fairly severe attacks on democracy and devolution in the UK, but Scotland and Wales have gone further down this road, with votes at 16. Democracy has been on a long-term trend of engaging more people. We have to ask why we are suddenly heading in the opposite direction with voter ID.
My final point is a practical one. Most of this discussion has focused on the estimated 2 million people who do not have any ID. I do not think we have talked enough about the people who do not have ID on them at the point where they go to vote. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, pointed out, none of the pilots was in a large urban area.
I was in a large urban area—Sheffield—telling on a polling station in one of the years when the pilots were being conducted. I saw a large number of people who had seen the reports and thought that they had to have ID.