That's so frustrating 1Morewineplease, it does seem with more legal requirements to check people's identity, more and more people are getting caught out with badly thought out rules like that. The legimate needs for it have expanded, with benefits and problems.
I'm not sure it would do much for voting, but how ID works in this country is an issue many struggle & blocking people from more and more areas of life with things as they are. With more legal requirements to verify people's identity to prevent fraud in many different areas of life, it's getting a lot harder to not have photo ID.
It does come with risks and may not be how people want society to go, but in the last year I or others in my home have had to have ID to meet legal requirements on prevention of money laundering, to open bank accounts, to take the Life in the UK test, to take the naturalisation oath and get the related certificate (which then gave me the right to vote), to get an enhanced DBS check, and to be able to take assessments as a private candidate.
How else would people like these be handled? The alternative to ID for a private candidate was getting a signature on a paper from someone from a "suitable profession" from a list of 6 professions (totally reliable and doesn't at all have classist barriers or an issue when we were in the middle of lockdown). It was that or my DS1 wouldn't be allowed to test for a qualification, because enough people have pushed through wanting to make sure people aren't getting others to take the test for them.
I used to have a Biometric Residency Permit required by the UK government for non-EU immigrants. The UK government actually handles a lot of IDs and databases - not perfectly, and yes people are making money hand over fists from it, but from BRPs to bus passes (both of which I've seen as potential ID to use for voting), they're handling or paying others to handle it and they've all got out data on it -- at least those have a form of information to put on it, unlike websites that take our information.
Yes, I got used to it. The only thing that annoyed me was the cost to get rights I'd had with indefinite leave to remain. It was only used a handful of times for things like the Life in the UK test and the same things most people use for ID. In fact, I used it more for the US's requirements for ID than I did for anything related to the UK.
To read the data on it, you need the technology and software to read it - I watched it be scanned at my Life in the UK test and it was quite a bit of kit - everyone else just looked at what was printed on it. Yeah, some criminals can get the kit, just like they do from our devices or other ID. That's why we're meant to report if things like that get stolen or lost.
I was actually a bit sad when I had to cut mine in four after I got citizenship and send it back, on threat of fine if I don't, mostly because there isn't as handy a British version as a non-driver. The UK seems so far behind on this from everyone else on getting at least a voluntary form of universally accepted ID not connected to passports or driving.