CA Could Require ID, Social Security Number To Vote [SURVEY]

CALIFORNIA — If a new state initiative becomes law, it would significantly tighten rules around voter registration and casting a vote in California — especially for those living in the country without documentation.

The new initiative would mandate Californians to present an official identification card to vote in person, require mail-in voters to provide a government-issued ID card and signature matching their voter file. The mandate would also require Californians to provide a full Social Security number when registering to vote or to verify existing registrations, according to California's Secretary of State's Office.

The initiative would also mandate all of the state's 58 counties to report in-person voting wait times after each election.

The new initiative was cleared to begin collecting petition signatures on Nov. 19, Secretary of State Shirley Weber announced.

Currently, Californians are not required to show identification to a polling place worker before casting a ballot in "most cases," according to the state. Those voting for the first time after registering to vote by mail may be asked to show a form of identification at a polling place, state officials said.

A copy of a recent utility bill or a sample ballot booklet are also currently accepted as appropriate forms of identification.

The mostly GOP-backed initiative comes 13 years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could require voters to show a photo ID to vote if they mandated it. To date, 11 states — most of which have Republican legislatures — have strict voter ID laws, while another 24 have looser requirements around asking for identification, the National Conference of State Legislature reported.

Proponents of similar initiatives argue that requiring identification would help mitigate election fraud.

In the aftermath of Donald Trump's defeat and the Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives and Senate in 2020, Republican state legislatures across the nation have driven a tsunami of voter restriction laws, requiring voter ID, restricting mail-in voting and reducing polling places.

In California, where Democrats hold a supermajority in the state Legislature, voter restriction measures would have little chance of making it on the ballot except through a grassroots signature-gathering effort. There has been no evidence of widespread fraud or other wrongdoing with the 2020 election, and those claims have been rejected by judges, election officials and Trump’s own attorney general.

Nevertheless, two-thirds of Republicans said Joe Biden was not legitimately elected president, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted two weeks after Biden's inauguration. Election officials said it was important to remind the public that there were no widespread problems with the 2020 election, which was dubbed the “most secure” in U.S. history by a group of federal, state and local election officials.

Paige Austin and the Associated Press contributed to this report.