The next general election could determine whether Californians will need a government ID to vote in elections.
A coalition that includes several conservative Southern California lawmakers is trying to get a ballot measure before voters in November 2026 that would require voter ID, a practice common in other states but opposed by those who say it’s an unnecessary roadblock to democracy.
Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Corona, and Assemblymember Bill Essayli, R-Corona, are coalition members, along with Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, R-San Diego.
“By passing a Voter ID initiative in California we can give voters increased confidence in our elections without unnecessarily restricting access to voting,” Calvert said in a news release.
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The same release quoted Essayli as saying: “There is a cancer growing in our democracy where too many people have lost confidence in our elections — and enacting a Voter ID law should be seen as the best bipartisan solution to this problem.”
The Lincoln Club of Orange County also is part of the coalition.
“There is wide-spread support among the donor community for enacting common-sense election integrity reforms through the Voter ID Initiative and we look forward to helping get this important reform qualified and passed in 2026,” club Chair Teresa Hernandez said in the release.
The release included polling data showing 68% of California voters — 93% of Republicans, 70% of independents and 52% of Democrats — support requiring voter ID to cast a ballot.
Thirty-six of 50 U.S. states require voters to show some form of ID in order to cast a ballot. Supporters say requiring voters to prove who they are boosts the public’s trust in election outcomes and cracks down on voter fraud.
Unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud, amplified by conservative media, followed the 2020 presidential election. But an Associated Press analysis found 475 cases of voter fraud out of more than 25 million ballots cast in six battleground states — far too few to have tipped the election in Joe Biden’s favor.
Also, “almost no elections in the past 50 years have been flipped because of documented voter fraud, with occasional exceptions at the local level,” The Washington Post reported in 2022.
Critics of voter ID laws argue that such rules disproportionately prevent voters of color, low-income and older voters from casting ballots because those groups are more likely to lack photo IDs.
“Instituting laws to require Voter ID is a stark effort to disenfranchise voters and cause chaos in California’s elections,” Dora Rose, deputy director for the League of Women Voters of California, said via email.
“The idea that voter fraud is a significant problem that needs to be counteracted with strict identification requirements, has been debunked by elections officials, experts, courts and studies. The truth is that voter fraud is exceedingly rare, and to build policy on a bed of lies is folly.”
The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California also opposes mandatory voter ID.
Julia Gomez, ACLU senior staff attorney, noted there have been several attempts to pass voter ID in the legislature.
The potential ballot measure is “concerning,” Gomez said, “because it’s one thing to do this through the legislature, where maybe not a lot of people are hearing the misinformation about fraud.”
Passing voter ID through a ballot measure potentially widens the audience exposed to misinformation, Gomez added.
DeMaio said by phone that the ballot measure isn’t meant to make voting harder.
“The reality is (polling) shows a majority of Californians harbor doubts about the integrity of our elections and that they are concerned that fraud is a risk,” he said.
“You cannot have a healthy democracy when people harbor doubts about the legitimacy of an election. And so this shouldn’t be seen as a Democrat or a Republican issue. This is a bipartisan issue.”
With every registered voter in California getting a mail-in ballot, voting by mail is popular in the Golden State. Eighty percent of voters used a vote-by-mail ballot in the November 2024 election, according to the California Secretary of State.
DeMaio said the ballot measure would still allow voting by mail. It would work, he said, by requiring Californians to provide a government document — a Real ID driver’s license, a passport or a social security card, for example — when registering to vote.
Most California voters, DeMaio said, “already have this status verified” through the Real ID program offered by the state Department of Motor Vehicles. Real ID requires applicants to provide several documents, including proof of identity through a passport, birth certificate or other means.
Unverified voters will get a notice from their county registrar of voter’s office telling them they need to provide “the government document of your choice verifying your citizenship” and “the number for that document” before voting in the next election, DeMaio said.
Voters not wanting to provide those documents can go to the DMV, show their birth certificates and get a voter ID card, DeMaio said. Vote-by-mail voters, when sending in their ballots, would give the last four digits of the government document they shared with the registrar, he added.
In-person voters “would provide those four digits in person or you would simply present your real ID photo identification or passport,” he added.
By August, supporters of the voter ID constitutional amendment hope to bring the measure to the secretary of state’s office.
Once the attorney general signs off on a title and summary for the ballot measure, organizers would have 180 days to get roughly 874,000 signatures from California voters to put the measure on the November 2026 ballot.
Organizers are aiming to collect at least 1 million signatures as a buffer against signatures being thrown out because they’re deemed invalid.
