Works fine in the UK, voter fraud is tricky (although there have been cases with postal votes) when there's a piece of paper that can be physically counted again.
Very hard to defraud if you are in, purely for example, Russia.
Lots of EU nationals living in UK who have no right to vote. But they are physically in UK. I think vast majority of them would never think about fraudulently voting.
But think about it logically, if voter ID is not required than it is easier to fraudulently vote. That seems logical to me. Do you have counter argument?
Voting still requires registration, which requires eligibility. At this point, you are also checked for uniqueness, so you can't just keep moving house to get more and more votes.
You can't just turn up at any polling station and say "give me a ballot paper", you turn up at the right polling station for your address and tell them your name and address.
They cross you off the list and if the same person tries to vote again, the voter is challenged, and a special (tendered) ballot paper is issued (which isn't counted in the vote). If a ward returns a significant number of tendered papers, then the returning officer can take action.
Polling places are small, and serve no more than 2500 voters.
So. In order for an individual to vote fraudulently, they must pretend to be an actual voter, they must know the name and address of the voter(s) they are pretending to be, they must do it early in the day, and they can't just keep going into the same polling station over and over, pretending to be someone new, otherwise they are likely to be recognised.
In order for a group to do this at a scale that matters, they must also be pretty sure that most of the real voters aren't actually going to turn up to vote.
Given all that, it is probably easier to engage in intimidation and/or bribery of actual voters, than to fraudulently complete ballot papers yourself. Voter ID doesn't protect against that.
Though, here in the UK, I've actually had more than one polling card show up at different addresses. Technically, I could have traveled to the other town and voted there as well. Not that that's legal mind.
Different locations do it differently. I know of one are where all you need is someone with an ID to vouch that you are a resident of that area and you can register (under any name you want) and vote. Poll watchers have told me about cases where a bus shows up one person vouches for everybody on the bus and so they vote. They are sure it is fraud, but nothing can be done about it.
If it is true or not I don't know, but is a real concern if so.
That sounds like a ludicrous system, designed specifically to encourage fraud.
> If it is true or not I don't know, but is a real concern if so.
This is the most important part of your post. The same could be said of sea monsters and getting stuck if the wind changes when you're pulling a funny face.
I am really trying to figure out how not requiring an ID makes it easier to fraudulently vote.
Can you please walk me through a scenario for how someone could commit voting fraud in a way that would be stopped by a voter ID? The only one I can think of is saying you are someone else in your community, like your neighbor... but they are going to find that out right away when your actual neighbor goes to try to vote and finds out someone else has already voted in their name.
Very hard to defraud if you are in, purely for example, Russia.