voter ID law

voter ID law, any U.S. state law by which would-be voters are required or requested to present proof of their identities before casting a ballot. The types of proof accepted for that purpose vary from state to state; some states accept only a few types of photographic identification, such as a driver’s license, passport, or state identification card, whereas others also accept nonphotographic documentary proof, such as a utility bill or rent receipt. By the second decade of the 21st century, more than two-thirds of U.S. states had adopted voter ID laws of one kind or another. A few of those statutes, however, were subsequently struck down or enjoined by the courts as a result of legal challenges.

All voter ID laws provide an alternative means of voting for persons who lack (or refuse to present) acceptable identification. Laws by which such means require some follow-up action by the voter are known as “strict” voter ID laws (e.g., the voter may be given a provisional ballot that is not counted unless the voter presents acceptable identification at an election office within a specified period of time). Voter ID laws are also sometimes said to be more or less strict with respect to the number of acceptable forms of identification they recognize; the length of time they give voters using provisional ballots to present acceptable identification after an election; whether there are exemptions or accommodations for certain groups of voters, such as the elderly or the indigent; and, in general, the range of opportunities they provide would-be voters to cast a regular ballot. In contrast, “nonstrict” voter ID laws are either request-only laws or laws that require proof of identity but do not impose a follow-up action (e.g., the voter may be given a provisional ballot that is counted if the voter’s identity is subsequently confirmed by election officials).

Proponents of voter ID laws, most of whom belonged to the Republican Party, argued that they were necessary to prevent in-person voter fraud and that they would increase public confidence in the integrity of the electoral system. Opponents, most of whom belonged to the Democratic Party, pointed out that in-person voter fraud was virtually nonexistent and argued that the real purpose of such laws was to suppress voting among Democratic-leaning groups such as African Americans, the poor, and the young, a greater proportion of whom did not possess the relevant forms of identification.

The first U.S. voter ID law, a request-only measure, was adopted in South Carolina in 1950. By 1980 four other states had passed similar laws, and by 2000 the total number of states with nonstrict voter ID laws had increased to 14. The first strict voter ID laws were passed in Georgia and Indiana in 2005, though court challenges delayed their implementation until 2008, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Indiana law in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board. In subsequent years several other states adopted new strict or nonstrict voter ID laws or replaced their existing nonstrict laws with strict ones. Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), which had invalidated a provision of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 that determined which “covered” jurisdictions were prohibited from changing their election laws without federal approval, Texas implemented a strict voter ID law that had been blocked by the Justice Department as discriminatory (the law was struck down by a federal district court in 2014 but remained in effect through the midterm elections of that year pending a review by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit). Alabama, the covered jurisdiction in which Shelby County had arisen, implemented a nonstrict voter ID law in 2014. Strict voter ID laws in other states were struck down by state or federal courts in Missouri (2006) and in Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (2014); a revised version of Missouri’s law was implemented in 2014.

Legal challenges to voter ID laws have taken several forms. Some opponents have argued that, because they disproportionately disenfranchise African American and other minority voters, voter ID laws violate Section 2 of the VRA, which (as amended) prohibits any “standard, practice, or procedure” that “results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen…to vote on account of race or color.” Others have alleged that voter ID laws are inconsistent with the equal protection clauses of many state constitutions and of the U.S. Constitution because they unduly burden the exercise of the right to vote or because they disproportionately burden the exercise of the right to vote of certain groups. Another argument holds that, because persons without acceptable identification must often pay a fee to obtain it, voter ID laws amount to a poll tax, in direct violation of the Twenty-fourth Amendment (1964) to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits such taxes in federal elections. Other challenges to voter ID laws have asserted that they violate the right to vote itself, which is guaranteed in many state constitutions.