A Republican-backed proposal in California to create new voter ID requirements and citizenship audits is set to appear on the ballot in November, part of a nationwide GOP effort to tighten voting laws.
The proposal would require voters to bring identification to the polls and provide an ID number when voting by mail. Local officials would also be required to regularly check voter rolls to help ensure that only U.S. citizens are registered.
The effort in a heavily Democratic state comes as President Trump and other Republicans at the state and federal level are trying to impose stricter voting rules through a series of new initiatives, even as documented cases of voter fraud, including voting by non-citizens, are extremely rare.
California Secretary of State, Shirley N. weber, A petition said on Friday Putting the measure on the ballot in her state passed the threshold of nearly 875,000 signatures required for such an initiative to go before voters.
Assemblyman Carl DeMaio, the San Diego Republican who led the campaign, said Saturday that the new requirements will help secure the election system and give people “a sense of trust and confidence that only eligible people are voting in our elections.”
But Democrats and voting rights advocates say strict ID rules could make it harder for people to vote, especially people of color and low-income voters. Jenny Farrell, executive director of the League of Women Voters of California, said California’s elections are “very secure.” He argued that the proposal would make it harder for Californians to vote and waste resources on “a problem that doesn’t exist.”
California voters are already required to provide information such as date of birth, driver’s license or Social Security number when registering to vote. The ballot measure also proposes to require voters to provide a government-issued ID at the polls. Voters using mail-in ballots, Most Popular Choice for Voting In recent elections in California, a government-issued identification number will be required to be provided when voting.
Richard Hassan, an election law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, said most people who want to vote have some form of identification, but provisions for proof of citizenship could impose a significant new burden on election officials.
Thirty-six states require voters to present some form of identification when voting, but California is not one of them.
The fight over voting laws extends far beyond California. Last month Republican state lawmakers in Florida passed a bill that would require voters to verify their citizenship when registering.
And in recent months, Mr. Trump has demanded that congressional lawmakers pass a bill before the midterm elections that would force voters to prove their citizenship in person upon registration, ban the use of IDs without photos at polling places and criminalize failures to enforce such requirements. But the bill, the Save America Act, shows little prospect of moving forward.
laurel rosenhall Contributed to the reporting.
