The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and several other organizations have come together to oppose the Voter ID initiative led by Reform California and State Assemblymember Carl DeMaio. They state that if passed, it would create barriers for Californians to cast their vote.
Angelica Salceda, Program Director of the ACLU NorCal Democracy Speech and Technology program, explained that the initiative would be a form of suppression.
“This is really a vote suppression effort, plain and simple,” said Salceda. “In California, we already verify individuals’ information when they’re registering to vote.
When registering to vote, residents already have to provide their ID or Social Security Number according to the CA Secretary of State Voter Guide. Salceda noted that to verify when voting in person, voters have to state their name and address to sign in, and signatures are verified for mail-in voting.
She stated that adding the ID requirement is a barrier because many people in disabled or black and brown communities do not have current ID’s, either from moving or additional barriers keeping them from going to the Department of Motor Vehicles to obtain a physical card.
According to the fact sheet on the ACLU NorCal website, nationally, 28 percent of disabled voters do not have a current driver’s license, and 20 percent do not have a driver’s license. Similar rates apply to Black and Hispanic voters without a current license, with 28 and 27 percent not having one. Young voters will also be impacted, as 41 percent of voters aged 18 to 24 do not have a current driver’s license.
The Voter ID initiative states that it is intended to stop fraud and noncitizens voting; however, according to the ACLU fact sheet, there have been only 77 cases of noncitizens voting nationwide in the last 25 years.
Voters who choose to vote by mail must include a unique four-digit identifying number from the government on the envelope. This raises concerns about identity theft, according to a press release from ACLU NorCal, which states that over two years, the ballot will pass through many hands, exposing the number. Another concern is that if a number typed or written wrongly a person’s vote may be delayed.
“So their ballot won’t be counted because they just made a typographical error in the number. Many of us don’t even know what number we provided, whether it was a Social Security number or some other ID number, when we registered to vote,” said Salceda. “So, those folks will have a hard time either adding a number and their ballot being kicked back, or just not remembering at all. Those are the harms and concerns when it comes to voting right now.”
In the press release, Ludovic Blain, Chief Executive Officer of the California Donor Table, stated that the initiative is similar to the Jim Crow Era, and this would be a regression for California voters.
During the Jim Crow Era, there were poll taxes and literacy tests in place to keep Black voters out of the polls, even after they were given the right to vote. One notable clause that some states adopted was the grandfather clause, which meant you could vote only if your grandfather was allowed to vote in 1865 (hence the term grandfathered in). According to the Library of Congress, this blocked many descendants of slaves from voting.
If voters were eligible, they had to pay a poll tax, which, according to the National Museum of American History, poor white people were excused from paying if they had an ancestor who voted before the Civil War. Salceda stated this initiative would essentially be a poll tax.
“We can think of this as a poll tax. I mean, the time that it takes for you to take time off work to go get an ID, even if that ID is free,” said Salceda. “Especially in rural communities, or actually any community that might have a disparity in access to transportation, for example, it means a single mother having to figure out how to get across town, how to find transportation, how to take time off work, how to find childcare.”
She explained that the barriers are what make getting an ID costly. However, according to the CA DMV website, a driver’s license is $46 and a regular ID is $40. To replace or change information on a driver’s license, the cost is $37.
“Those are all costs to individuals. Those are all barriers, things that people have to do. Just to be able to participate in our democratic process. So I think that is one of the clearest similarities to what we saw during the Jim Crow Era. That they are very specific attempts to really disenfranchise and suppress the vote of certain communities,” said Salceda.
According to Ballot Pedia and the Reform California website, as of March 2026, the campaign has reached enough signatures to be placed on the ballot, and they just need to be verified now. DeMaio stated on the Reform California website that voters will have a chance to decide in November.
