California lawmaker announces ballot initiative campaign after voter ID bill fails
- Share via
SACRAMENTO — A bill to require voter ID and proof of citizenship to register to vote was rejected by California lawmakers Wednesday, though the Republican sponsor of the legislation vowed not to give up.
Assemblymember Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego) announced that he plans to launch a campaign to qualify his proposal as a statewide ballot initiative for the 2026 election.
DeMaio described his proposal as a nonpartisan issue when it came before the Assembly Committee on Elections Wednesday morning. The bill failed on a party line vote of 3-2 over concerns from opponents that more requirements would disenfranchise eligible voters and embolden false claims that California’s elections are not secure.
“We have the lowest level of public trust and confidence in our elections that we have ever seen. All the polling shows that, and that is something that Democrats and Republicans should see as a democracy issue, not a partisan issue,” DeMaio said during the hearing.
Most Americans approve of requiring voters to provide identification and proof of citizenship, polls show. According to a Gallup poll last October, 84% of Americans support photo ID and 83% support providing proof of citizenship when registering to vote for the first time.
DeMaio believes the initiative will have widespread support in California, too, calling it “shameful” for his colleagues to kill the bill.
“Democrat, Republican and everyone in between, [voters] care about the health of our democracy. They demand more integrity from our elections,” he said afterward.
The bill, AB 25, would have required people to provide some kind of documentation of citizenship when registering to vote, and for registered voters to present a photo ID before voting in person. The legislation was co-sponsored by Assemblymember Bill Essayli (R-Corona), who last week was appointed as U.S. attorney for Los Angeles and surrounding areas.
According to a legislative analysis of the bill, it was unclear what kind of documents could be used to prove citizenship. A California Real ID can be obtained by permanent and temporary residents that are not citizens, and some people born in American territories, like in American Samoa, can obtain a U.S. passport as U.S. nationals but are not considered citizens.
Currently in California, people registering to vote sign a declaration under perjury that they are U.S. citizens and eligible to vote, but do not have to provide proof of citizenship — a stipulation that DeMaio called a “pinky swear.”
DeMaio’s bill would have required Californians voting by mail to provide the last four digits of a government-issued identification number, like a Social Security number or driver’s license. If the numbers didn’t match, the ballot would be disqualified.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 36 states request or require voters to show some kind of identification at polling stations, although laws vary regarding photo ID.
California is one of 14 states, along with Washington, D.C., that uses other verification methods, such as matching signatures from a ballot to information on the voter’s registration file.
Forcing otherwise eligible voters to obtain government documents “amounts to what we consider to be an unconstitutional poll tax,” said Dora Rose, deputy director of the League of Women Voters of California, who testified in opposition of the bill. It would disenfranchise vulnerable groups of people, she said — women, people with disabilities, communities of color and the elderly.
Changing the law could also bring credence to claims of widespread voter fraud — which has repeatedly been debunked, Rose told committee members.
Chair Gail Pellerin (D-Santa Cruz), who voted against the bill, agreed.
“I hope that my colleagues on the committee will join me in rejecting baseless attempts to erode public trust in California’s elections,” she said. Pellerin suggesting that if elected state representatives didn’t believe state elections were valid, they should resign.
DeMaio’s Republican allies on the committee pushed back. David J. Tangipa (R-Fresno) said the argument that minorities were too poor or not intelligent enough to secure a government-issued ID was offensive.
Last week, California and a coalition of other states sued the Trump administration to block the president’s recent executive order seeking to radically reshape voting rules nationwide, including requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship, at the penalty of states losing access to federal funds.
President Trump’s executive order seeking broad changes to how elections are run in the U.S. holds the potential to reorder voting, even as it faces almost certain litigation.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said Trump’s order was an illegal attempt by the White House to strip states of their authority to govern elections.
Trump — who has falsely asserted that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him — has said the U.S. voting system is wildly outdated and alleged that fraud and voting by noncitizen immigrants is a major problem.
Trump’s order, if upheld by the courts, would require all voters in the U.S. to show proof of citizenship — such as a passport or Real ID — before they could register to vote in any federal election. Bonta said the president’s order is clearly unconstitutional and that it’s up to states to regulate and administer elections, and that California has decided that requiring voter ID is not necessary.
“There is no evidence of any widespread voter fraud, there is no evidence that proof of citizenship is needed to secure the integrity of our elections,” Bonta said during a news conference last week.
Lake County elections officials are tired of the rush to count ballots, defending their history of being the last in California and possibly the nation to tally votes.
DeMaio’s bill in California also would have overhauled other election laws — in a state where some counties take a month to count ballots, even those postmarked on election day, the bill would have required all ballots to be counted within 72 hours.
