Statewide voter ID measure to appear on November ballot

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (KESQ) - California voters, including those in Riverside County, will decide in November whether to impose new voter identification and citizenship verification requirements under a proposed constitutional amendment that qualified for the November ballot, state officials announced today.

Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber said Friday the initiative cleared the signature threshold needed to appear on the Nov. 3 ballot.   

The initiative's proponents include state Assemblyman Carl DeMaio, R- San Diego County, state Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Huntington Beach, and Donald J. DiCostanzo, a business owner.

"The California Voter ID Initiative is a common-sense and bipartisan way to restore the trust and confidence all voters should have in our election system,'' DeMaio said in a statement. "Our measure simply holds government officials accountable to maintain accurate voter lists and verify the identity
of individuals casting ballots in our elections."  

Voting rights advocates have criticized the measure, saying it may make it harder for some people to cast ballots and could reduce overall participation.

The measure would require voters to present government-issued identification at the polls or provide identifying information when voting by mail. It would also require the state to issue voter identification cards upon request and mandate annual reports on voter citizenship verification rates.

To qualify, the initiative needed 874,641 valid signatures, equal to 8% of votes cast in the 2022 gubernatorial election. Officials said the measure exceeded that threshold through random sampling.  

The proposal is scheduled to be formally certified for the ballot June 25 unless it is withdrawn by its proponents.   

A fiscal analysis estimated one-time implementation costs in the tens of millions of dollars, with ongoing annual costs potentially reaching into the low hundreds of millions.