UK voter ID laws attack ‘democratic rights of people of colour’, say artists in open letter

Voter ID laws are “an attack on the democratic rights of people of colour” and should be scrapped, more than 50 eminent actors, artists, campaigners and others from minority ethnic communities have told Keir Starmer in an open letter.

The signatories, including Sir Lenny Henry, the artist Anish Kapoor, the actors Sophie Okonedo, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, David Harewood and Paterson Joseph, the Bridgerton stars Adjoa Andoh and India Amarteifio and the writer Kamila Shamsie, said there was no reason for the new government to keep the rules.

A poll carried out after this month’s general election said more than 400,000 people may have been prevented from voting because they lacked the necessary ID, with those from minority ethnic communities more than twice as likely to have experienced this. It showed that 6.5% of voters of colour were turned away from a polling booth at least once, compared with 2.5% of white voters.

This was the first general election that required people across the UK to show ID before they voted. Under a law introduced by the Conservative government, voters have to produce one of a small list of photo-based documents.

Charities and campaigners had warned that people from minority ethnic backgrounds were among the communities disproportionately less likely to possess the necessary ID, and are thus more likely to be prevented from voting.

The letter, coordinated by the Runnymede Trust and Operation Black Vote, called the rules “an attack on Black and Brown people, and other marginalised communities”, citing the poll that showed that people from minority communities were 2.5 times more likely to be turned away than white people.

Arguing that the last government introduced the law “to further their own party political interests” – something the Conservatives reject – the letter tells the prime minister it was also “a solution no one asked for, to a problem that didn’t exist” given the extremely low levels of in-person voter fraud.

The letter continues: “These laws are an attack on the democratic rights of people of colour and leave people without a say in the running of our country. Our right to vote is even more important at a time when over half of Black children are living in poverty in Britain. People have been denied a say in shaping our country’s future. This has to change before the next election.

“Rather than spending £180m of taxpayers’ money every decade on unnecessary guidance and clamping down on a nonexistent problem, we should simply let people vote – and celebrate them doing so. As the UK’s new prime minister, that historic responsibility falls to you.”

The signatories also call for the government to introduce automatic voter registration, where people are placed on the electoral roll by default by cross-referencing other databases, rather than having to proactively register.

Labour is planning to do this, but has yet to set out details as to when and how this might happen.

The letter says: “In a democracy, every vote should count. It’s time our communities got their vote back. Prime minister, please scrap voter-ID laws and look urgently at implementing automatic voter registration.”

Starmer’s government has not said it plans to scrap the ID rules, but has committed to improving the system, including a possible expansion of the list of documents, and has promised to carefully consider the findings of a report by the Electoral Commission into voting at the general election.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which is responsible for electoral policy, said: “We want to make sure every legitimate voter can exercise their democratic right to vote. That’s why we will conduct a thorough evaluation of voter ID rules, to evaluate how they impacted voters during the general election, before bringing forward firm proposals in due course.”