Voter ID initiative qualifies for California’s November 2026 election – CalMatters

from Nadia LathanCalMatters

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Californians will decide this fall whether to require voters to show proof of citizenship before casting their ballots.

Backed by the GOP voter ID voting initiative on Friday advanced to the Nov. 3 ballot, marking a significant victory for the San Diego assemblyman Carl DeMaiowho led the campaign to collect signatures. DeMaio and other Republican operatives have been pushing for tighter voter restrictions in deep-blue California for years.

If approved, voters would be required to show a government-issued ID each time they go to the polls, while mail-in ballots would require the last four digits of an ID, such as a driver’s license. The Secretary of State and county elections offices will also have to check voter registration every time they vote.

Currently, voters only need to provide an ID and Social Security number when they register to vote. Thirty-six states require or recommend that voters show some form of identification at the polls, according to a 2025 report. National Conference of State Legislatures.

“This is an initiative that is incredibly popular with Democrats and Republicans,” the Republican senator said. Tony Strickland of Huntington Beach told CalMatters. “I think the only way we don’t take it is if we get (spending). So we’re working very hard with a campaign apparatus in place.”

Strickland and others who helped lead the campaign credited the swift certification of the initiative to Julie Luckey, the mother of tech billionaire Palmer Luckey, who helped raise most of the $10 million the campaign committee raised in the past year.

Voting rights groups say the initiative would suppress voter turnout among undocumented voters, many of whom are disproportionately poor and people of color.

Opponents, including the state’s most powerful unions, plan to campaign hard against him.

Voter fraud is rare in California. However, allegations of fraud and concerns about the integrity of the election have increased since President Donald Trump promoted false claims that the 2020 election was rigged.

Californians generally support voter ID at the polls, but are divided along ideological lines when given specific details about the ballot measure, according to 2026 survey by the UC Berkeley Institute for Governmental Studies. When told that the measure was intended to combat voter fraud and that it could suppress electoral votes, support dropped to 37%.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.