On Jan. 1, California’s new anti-election integrity law went into effect, prohibiting local governments in the Golden State from requiring voters to show identification to cast ballots in elections. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the restrictive legislation into law a little more than a month before November’s historic presidential election.
It’s certainly not the first time the far-left governor with higher political aspirations has been on the wrong side of American sentiment.
A new Rasmussen Reports poll finds that more than three-quarters of likely U.S. voters (77%) say requiring a photo ID to vote is a reasonable way to protect the integrity of elections. Just 17 percent think such measures are unreasonable. The latest numbers are up from 74 percent support in 2021, according to the pollster.
The survey of 1,229 respondents, conducted Jan.26-28, also found 60 percent believe voter ID laws do not “discriminate against some voters,” with 30 percent saying they do.
And support runs across the board, with 86 percent of Republicans supporting voter ID, and 69 percent of Democrats in favor, according to the poll published at NewsMax. Three-quarters of voters who say they are not affiliated with either major party support the requirements.
It’s the latest poll showing widespread support for voter ID laws. A Pew Research Center national poll conducted a year ago found bipartisan backing of the election integrity guardrails, with 69 percent of Democrats in favor and nearly universal support (95%) among Republicans.
‘People Want to Have Voter ID’
Thirty-six states have laws requesting or requiring voters to show some form of identification at the polls, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Deep blue California is not one of those states, further underscored by the law crushing efforts by local governments from employing the popular protection.
President Donald Trump, a very vocal proponent of voter ID and other election integrity measures, would like to see California change its position on voter ID. Touring the wildfire-ravaged Los Angeles area last month, the president suggested he’d like to tie voter ID to a federal disaster aid package.
“I want voter ID for the people of California. They all want it. Right now, you don’t have voter ID,” he told reporters at a press conference. “People want to have voter identification, you want to have proof of citizenship, ideally, you have one-day voting. I just want voter ID as a start.”
Among a laundry list of suspect election administration practices, California has been knocked for long delays in counting ballots.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has said he’s open to “conditioning” California aid to “policy changes.”
The city of Huntington Beach wants voter ID. Voters there in March approved a charter amendment allowing the city to implement the requirement in its municipal elections. It was the inspiration behind the statewide voter ID ban. Part of a broader election integrity package, the measure is supposed to take effect in 2026 — in a city fighting back against leftist politicians and policies dominating the nation’s most-populous state.
But the Orange County city’s voter ID provision runs counter to liberal groupthink at the State Capitol. Attorney General Bob Bonta joined Secretary of State Shirley Weber, both Democrats, in suing the Southern California community soon after the election integrity measure passed. The lawsuit alleges Huntington Beach’s charter amendment infringes on state voter rights, CalMatters reported. An Orange County judge tossed out the lawsuit last last year, saying the voter ID requirement isn’t in effect at present, so it doesn’t present a conflict with the state elections law.
‘Voter Turnout Increased’
Opponents of the election security requirements insist voter ID disenfranchises voters who may find it difficult to obtain identification, despite the fact that they must present ID for an array of goods and services. In California, they say it’s more than enough that state law requires identification upon registering to vote.
“I just don’t buy that,” Tom Pavich, Kern County coordinator for the Election Integrity Project California, told KGET. “In today’s day and age everybody has an ID.”
Fears that identification requirements at the polls leads to voter suppression at the polls have been shown to be unfounded. In Georgia, fear mongers like Stacey Abrams, failed Democrat candidate for governor, warned that Republican-led election reforms would suppress participation. Not so, according to turnout figures.
“Numerous studies and turnout data from states that have improved the security of their election process through commonsense reforms have shown that making integrity a primary goal of the laws and regulations governing the election process does not ‘suppress’ votes,” wrote Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative and former Federal Election Commission member, in a 2023 column. “In fact, it seems to increase voter confidence in elections, which in turn can help to increase turnout.”
As von Spakovsky reported, a law requiring government-issued photo ID to vote was among Georgia’s first major election reforms. Following its implementation in the 2007 and 2008 elections, voter turnout, including black and Hispanic turnout, dramatically increased compared to the 2004 presidential election.
In Georgia’s 2022 primary elections, after leftists predicted doom and gloom following post-2020 election law reforms, turnout surged by more than 50 percent from the previous midterm election in 2018, according to the Georgia Public Policy Foundation.
“A funny thing happened on the way to Georgia’s widely predicted disenfranchisement of its voters: Voter turnout increased,” the foundation noted in a review of the numbers.
And the hits kept coming. In last year’s presidential election, the headlines proclaimed “record early voting turnout” in the swing state.
“After two days of early voting in Georgia, half a million people had already cast their ballots, according to data from the state’s election office,” ABC News reported.
‘It’s Not a Joke’
Even as voter ID laws are under constant attack by the left, some states are weighing enacting the election integrity measures.
In Maine, voter ID advocates submitted a record 170,000 signatures that would place the voter ID question up for referendum in this fall’s election. Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, has called the proposal “really problematic.” It should be noted that, Bellows, Maine’s top election official, was forced to reverse her ruling last year blocking Trump from Maine’s primary ballot after the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned a similar decision to keep Trump off the Colorado ballot.
In November, Nevada voters decisively approved a ballot question requiring a photo ID to vote in person. Voters must approve it one more time — in the 2026 general election — before the protection goes into effect.
“They laughed at me in the hallways and thought it was a joke. It’s not a joke … 73% of the Nevada population wants voter ID,” Assemblymember Gregory Hafen II, a Republican who serves as minority floor leader, told 8NewsNow. “They want to feel that their vote and only their vote is being counted.”
‘Cancer Growing in Our Democracy’
California lawmakers recently introduced a voter ID bill following Trump’s call for election integrity protections in the left-led state. The legislation, which would also require county elections officials to tally mail-in ballots within three days of an election, “would restore public trust and confidence in elections,” according to the Republican legislators.
“There is a cancer growing in our democracy where too many California voters do not trust in our elections,” Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, R-San Diego, one of the authors of the California Voter ID and Election Integrity Act, said in a statement. “California voters will not have the confidence they deserve that we have fraud-free elections — until we enact this common sense voter ID law.”
The bill faces little chance of passage in a legislature dominated by Democrats — 30 Dems to 9 Republicans in the Senate, and 60 to 19 in the Assembly. Even if it did pass, Newsom would quickly kill it, putting the Democrat governor once again out of touch with the vast majority of the American people.
Rep. Nick LaLota, R-N.Y., who served as a county election commissioner and attorney before being elected to Congress, said the importance of voter ID cannot be overstated.
“It helps protect the integrity of our elections, deters fraudulent activity, and ensures that each citizen’s vote has the weight it deserves,” LaLota said in a statement last year in support of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE Act), an election integrity measure that would standardize voter ID requirements nationwide.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
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