Voter ID laws brought in by the Tories disenfranchised more people than it was meant to protect, a damning report has found.
An inquiry by the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on democracy and the constitution also found that voters from ethnic minority backgrounds were more likely to be turned away than white people.
The group warned that the results of future elections could even be affected unless urgent reforms are made.
Among those who drew up the report was Sir Robert Buckland, who was justice minister when the law bringing in the controversial voter ID rules was first introduced to parliament.
Under the new arrangements, which were introduced at May’s local elections, voters must produce an accepted form of photographic identification before they can cast their ballot.
Ministers claimed the changes were necessary to prevent voter impersonation, despite the fact that there were only eight instances of it in the UK in the last decade.
According to the APPG report, at least 14,000 voters were turned away from polling stations because of the new rules.
“This means that more than 14,000 people (who were likely entitled to vote) were denied a ballot for every one case of personation prevented,” the APPG said.
They said the government’s reforms were a “poisoned cure in that it disenfranchises more electors than it protects to the extent that it could affect electoral outcomes”.
The report also found “evidence of racial and disability discrimination at polling stations”.
“Independent election observers had recorded non-white people being turned away even when they had qualifying ID while some white people were permitted to vote without showing ID at all,” the group said.
“One witness, who suffered from immune deficiency which requires her to wear a mask in public, was not permitted to vote unless she removed the mask.”
The APPG said rather than scrap voter ID entirely, those without the necessary identification should be allowed to sign a declaration stating they are who they claim to be.
The range of accepted ID should also be widened, the group said, while polling station officers should receive better training.
Sir Robert Buckland said: “We need to reduce uncertainty about voter ID to an absolute minimum, which is why the recommendations in this report are sensible and ought to be implemented .”
SNP MP John Nicolson, who chaired the inquiry, said: “Voters must be able to exercise their democratic rights by casting their ballot, and they must have the security of knowing that no one is going to undermine that right by voting in their name.
“The voter ID system, as it stands, doesn’t get the balance right. You don’t solve anything by disenfranchising voters.”
Jacob Rees-Mogg admitted in May that voter ID was an attempt by the Tories to “gerrymander” elections, but said they had failed.
He said: “We found the people who didn’t have ID were elderly and they by and large voted Conservative.
“So we made it hard for our own voters and we upset a system that worked perfectly well.”