Labour has said there was "absolutely no case for introducing voter ID"

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Pilots of the scheme were carried out in yesterday’s polls in Bromley, Gosport, Swindon, Watford and Woking in a bid to cut down on voter fraud.

But yesterday several voters and councillors reported that the system had descended into chaos after constituents were turned away from their polling stations.

Now the group Democracy Volunteers, who attended polling stations in each of the five council areas, claim voters were refused a ballot paper in more than a fifth (21 percent) of locations because they couldn’t prove their identity.

It said that 1.67 percent of the 3,229 voters sampled couldn’t cast their vote, although the group, which strives to improve the quality of democratic elections, was unable to say whether any of them returned later with valid ID.

Labour’s spokeswoman for voter engagement Cat Smith described the pilots as a “fiasco” and said the introduction of the ID checks was “a sledgehammer to crack a nut”.