Voter ID laws in the United States are laws that require a person to provide some form of official identification before they are permitted to register to vote, receive a ballot for an election, or to actually vote in elections in the United States.
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At the federal level, the Help America Vote Act of 2002 requires a voter ID for all new voters in federal elections who registered by mail and who did not provide a driver's license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number that was matched against government records.[1] Though state laws requiring some sort of identification at voting polls go back to 1950, no state required a voter to produce a government-issued photo ID as a condition for voting before the 2006 elections. Indiana became the first state to enact a strict photo ID law, which was struck down by two lower courts before being upheld in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board by the U.S. Supreme Court.[2][3][4] As of 2021, 36 states have enacted some form of voter ID requirement.[2][5] Lawsuits have been filed against many of the voter ID requirements on the basis that they are discriminatory with an intent to reduce voting.[6] The proliferation of voter ID laws has prompted nonpartisan, nonprofit organizations like League of Women Voters and VoteRiders to work with and for U.S. citizens so that everyone who is eligible to cast a vote can do so.[7][8]
Proponents of voter ID laws argue that they reduce electoral fraud and increase voter confidence while placing only little burden on voters. Opponents point to what is close to a scholarly consensus that there is unlikely to be any meaningful amount of fraud and studies that failed to find a correlation between voter ID laws and voter confidence.[4][9][10][11] They further argue that the laws, pushed only by Republicans, are partisan and designed to make it harder for vulnerable populations who tend to vote for Democrats. Low-income people, people of color and younger voters are less likely to have ID while transgender people are less likely to have an ID that is up-to-date.[12][13]
While research has shown mixed results due to the difficulty of isolating the impacts of one change in election law, studies have generally found that voter ID laws tend to impact black and brown voters slightly more and slightly decrease overall turnout.[14] Research has also shown that Republican legislators in swing states, states with rapidly diversifying populations, and districts with sizable black, Latino, or immigrant populations have pushed the hardest for voter ID laws.[15][16][17] Parts of voter ID laws in several states have been overturned by courts.[18][19][20]
- ^ Tokaji, Daniel P. "The Help America Vote Act: An Overview". The E-Book on Election Law: An Online Reference Guide. Moritz College of Law. Retrieved March 13, 2013.
- ^ a b Lee, Suevon; Smith, Sarah (March 9, 2016). "Everything You've Ever Wanted to Know About Voter ID Laws". ProPublica. Retrieved October 2, 2012.
- ^ Greenhouse, Linda (April 29, 2008). "In a 6-to-3 Vote, Justices Uphold a Voter ID Law". The New York Times.
- ^ a b "Explainer: Voter identification". electionlab.mit.edu. June 10, 2021. Retrieved September 2, 2024.
- ^ "Voter Identification Requirements – Voter ID Laws". National Conference of State Legislatures. Retrieved November 5, 2014.
- ^ shanton, karen (May 2014). "voter id in the courts" (PDF). Retrieved July 10, 2021.
- ^ Heinz, Ethan (September 24, 2022). "NAACP and League of Women Voters sues over voter ID laws". ABC17NEWS. Retrieved October 24, 2022.
- ^ Mills, Shamane (March 2, 2016). "National Group Steps In To Help Madison Voters With ID Requirements". Wisconsin Public Radio. Retrieved October 24, 2022.
- ^ Cottrell, David; Herron, Michael C.; Westwood, Sean J. (October 26, 2017). "An exploration of Donald Trump's allegations of massive voter fraud in the 2016 General Election". Electoral Studies. 51: 123–142. doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2017.09.002.
- ^ Farrell, Henry (November 14, 2013). "Trump's commission should investigate alien abductions, not voter fraud. There's as much survey evidence for both". The Washington Post. Retrieved May 12, 2017.
- ^ Gilbert, Michael D. (September 5, 2014). "The Problem of Voter Fraud". Columbia Law Review. 115 (3): 739–75.Virginia Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper No. 2014-56; Virginia Law and Economics Research Paper No. 2014-15.
- ^ "Map: 29 million Americans live under new voter ID laws put in place since 2020". NBC News. March 12, 2024. Retrieved September 1, 2024.
- ^ Schouten, Fredreka; Shelton, Shania (May 2, 2023). "Republican-controlled states target college students' voting power ahead of high-stakes 2024 elections". CNN. Retrieved September 1, 2024.
- ^ Skelley, Geoffrey (May 17, 2021). "How The Republican Push To Restrict Voting Could Affect Our Elections". FiveThirtyEight. Retrieved May 17, 2021.
Political science hasn't found that these types of laws have that big of an effect, at least as individual measures. But, while laws that make it more taxing to vote are not new, the current onslaught of voting restrictions and changes to how elections will be administered is not something we've grappled with on this scale. Additionally, there is their nakedly partisan origins — nearly 90 percent of the voting laws proposed or enacted in 2021 were sponsored primarily or entirely by Republican legislators — and the fact that these laws are likely to have a greater impact on Black and brown voters, who are less likely to vote Republican.
- ^ Hicks, William; McKee, Seth; Smith, Daniel (February 21, 2016). "The Determinants of State Legislator Support for Restrictive Voter ID Laws". State Politics & Policy Quarterly. 16 (4): 411–431. doi:10.1177/1532440016630752. S2CID 27742794.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
:16was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Hopkins, Dan (August 21, 2018). "What We Know About Voter ID Laws". FiveThirtyEight. Retrieved August 21, 2018.
- ^ Ariane de Vogue, "Voting challenges head toward the Supreme Court: 4 cases to watch", CNN, July 19, 2016; accessed July 30, 2016
- ^ Wines, Michael; Blinder, Alan (July 30, 2016). "Voter ID Laws Take a Beating in U.S. Courts". The New York Times. p. 1.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
wapostwas invoked but never defined (see the help page).
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