Voter Identification

The most contentious disputes about access to the polling booth by 2011 involved voter identification requirements. The battle over tightened ID requirements typically, but not always, split neatly along partisan lines, with Democrats accusing Republican of imposing requirements to keep thousands of voters from the polls, particularly in constituencies in urban areas and among low income persons and minorities who often vote Democratic but who more than more middle-class citizens may not have photo IDs. Republicans responded that tighter standards were needed to prevent voter fraud. Opposition to strict ID requirements also came from antipoverty advocacy groups and student organizations.

By August 2011, thirty states required voters to show identification before being allowed to vote. But the requirements ranged from some type of ID, such as a utility bill or bank statement that does not have to include a photo, to a government-issued photo, such as a driver's license.

Sixteen states by mid-2011 required a photo. Eight of them were “strict photo” states that required a photo image for a person to vote. A ninth state, Rhode Island, in 2011 passed legislation establishing a photo requirement beginning in 2014. A person who could not provide a photo was allowed to cast a provisional ballot that would be counted if he or she returned within several days with a photo ID. Eight other states required a photo ID but allowed voters to cast ballots if certain other standards were met. Those criteria varied by state but typically involved showing personal information such as a birth certificate or signing an affidavit swearing to the identity claimed.

Nationwide, voter ID legislation was on the agenda in more states than it was not in 2011. As a measure of the growing momentum for stricter ID requirements, seven states enacted some type of legislation—more than passed in all states from 2006 through 2010. Three of the 2011 states acting imposed first-time requirements while four others tightened existing laws. Only three states—Oregon, Vermont, and Wyoming—that did not have an ID requirement did not consider the issue during their 2011 legislative sessions.

A number of states specified that ID requirements would not take effect until 2012 or, as with Rhode Island, later. Although voter ID was the hottest election issue by mid-2011, not all states adopted strict new rules. In Colorado, senate Democrats blocked a proposed voter photo ID law and Democratic governors vetoed strict photo ID bills in Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, and North Carolina. In Ohio, a strict photo ID law was moving quickly through the GOP-controlled legislature when the effort stalled after the Republican secretary of state, who previously was a state senator and state house Speaker, said he “would rather have no bill than one with a rigid photo identification provision that does little to protect against fraud and excludes legally registered voters' ballots from counting.” But in one unexpected case, Rhode Island—a solidly Democratic state with a governor who had previously been a moderate Republican before running as an independent—overwhelmingly approved its new voter ID law.

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