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Voter ID is on five ballots today. Notice who stopped arguing against it.

Voting booths with an American flag set up in an office for Election Day

Voter ID is on the ballot today in Arizona, California, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio, the most statewide voter ID measures in a single year on record. Watch the campaigns, not the ballots. In four of those states Democrats have gone quiet or crossed over. Only California is still fighting. California even sued one of its own cities to stop it.

Is the reason the Democrats (except those California, where there appears to be no consequences for not listening to their voters) have suddenly gone radio silent about voter ID is that they are finally seeing the numbers? In August, 2025, a Pew research poll found that 83 percent of Americans favor requiring government-issued photo ID to vote, including 95 percent of Republicans and 71 percent of Democrats. Gallup put the same issue at 84 percent in October, 2024. This is not a wedge issue. It is a consensus issue that only one party’s leadership seems to care about.

The receipts from the campaign trail

Nevada’s Question 7 won 73 percent of the vote in 2024. Unfortunately, it still needs a second yes today to take effect. The groups against it reported no contributions in the first half of this year. Attorney General Aaron Ford, the Democratic nominee for governor in one of the closest races in the country, has taken no public position. The director of Nevada’s ACLU explained why it polls so well there: Democrats elsewhere fought voter ID bills, and in Nevada “that has not been the case.”

In Ohio, Issue 3 finally amends the Ohio Constitution to put into effect the photo ID rule the state has used since 2023. Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for governor, to her credit has said she supports the amendment.

Then there is California. Proposition 39 would require ID at the polls and the last four digits of an ID number on a mail ballot envelope. The state Democratic Party, the ACLU, and the League of Women Voters oppose it. Huntington Beach voters approved a local voter ID rule in March 2024. The Legislature answered with Senate Bill 1174, which bans any city from requiring ID at the polls, and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it that September. The attorney general then spent two years suing the city, and in January, the state Supreme Court declined to hear Huntington Beach’s appeal. A state that demands ID to buy cold medicine or board a flight spent public money to make sure no one could ask for it at a polling place.

Steelmaning the other side

A common argument against voter ID is that in-person impersonation is rare, so any rule that turns away even a few eligible voters would cost more than it would save. Seniors who have stopped driving, students, and people who just moved are the ones most likely to show up without the right card. Maine voters rejected a voter ID initiative 64 to 36 last November after Democratic leaders made exactly this case.

Those are fair points, but they point to issues with the system, not the principle. Nevada’s proposed measure accepts a license expired for up to four years and for those over 70, any expiration. The measure also accepts a tribal ID or a public college ID and lets mail-in voters use the last four digits of a Social Security number or a number issued by the county clerk. If the objection is the cost of an ID, the answer is a free ID. Nevada’s proposal has a fallback for just about everyone.

The Voters

Seven in ten Democrat voters are on board with voter ID. What remains to be seen is whether the Democrat officials, consultants and advocacy groups who are still calling any rule requiring voter ID rule an attack on democracy will listen to them. So read today’s results in that light. If Nevada and Ohio pass comfortably, the lesson is not that Republicans won a culture war; it is that they are listening to their constituents, and…dare we say, representing them.

Sources

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