Identified but Unheard: Assessing the Impact of Digital ID on the Civic and Political Participation of Marginalized Communities

The goal of this paper is to understand how digital ID systems can impact individuals' abilities to exercise their civic and political rights, particularly for members of marginalized communities, and to provide recommendations for building inclusive, secure, and transparent ID systems. Despite a large body of research on digital ID's impacts on social and economic inclusion, a gap around the impacts on political participation remains. As governments digitize identification systems and electoral procedures and seek to connect them, it is crucial that any digital ID system upholds democratic principles of inclusion, privacy and security, and transparency.