More than half a million Californians have signed a petition to amend the state constitution to require voter ID in all elections.
According to a report by Fox News, the effort is being led by a coalition called Californians for Voter ID. The group is working to collect at least 874,642 verified signatures to qualify the initiative for the November 2026 ballot, though organizers aim to gather 1.2 million to ensure enough are certified by county officials. The deadline to submit signatures is in March.
California State Senator Tony Strickland, who is supporting the measure, emphasized how the state’s failure to maintain accurate voter rolls creates opportunities for fraud.
“We had a dog that voted in the last couple elections in Costa Mesa,” Strickland said. “We don’t clean up our voter rolls. There are so many times where people move, college kids go out of state, or people move and they don’t clean up the voter rolls. And we mail out to everybody, and so you have a lot of live ballots with ballot harvesting.”
“Our initiative will now clean up the voter rolls throughout the state,” he added.
The proposed amendment would require voters to present government-issued identification when voting in person or provide the last four digits of a government ID when voting by mail. Election officials would also be required to verify the citizenship of registered voters to ensure only legal residents are receiving ballots.
Ryan Erwin, lead strategist for the campaign, said polling shows 70 percent of voters in the state support voter ID.
“We are on pace to qualify for the ballot faster than any measure in the history of California,” Erwin explained. “Voter ID is a commonsense way to build trust in the election process by requiring election officials to use government data to verify citizenship and voter eligibility, while also requiring identification for every vote counted.”
