A healthy democracy depends on both public participation and public trust. Without either, the system risks disaffection and loss of legitimacy.
California has made numerous moves in recent years to boost voter participation. From making it easier than ever to vote by mail to overly-liberal ballot harvesting laws, the Golden State has worked to optimize the public participation component of its election administration.
California has also maintained rising levels of public confidence in aspects of its elections. In 2017, just 47% of likely voters and 40% of adults either had “quite a lot of” or a “great deal of” confidence in how California counts votes, according to surveys by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. By 2024, those figures rose to 63% and 53%, respectively.
Lurking beneath those 2024 numbers were bigger concerns
Lurking beneath those 2024 numbers were bigger concerns about election integrity than those figures suggest. The same survey found that 42% of adults and 43% of likely voters said they were “somewhat concerned” or “very concerned” that it’s “too easy for people who are not eligible to vote in California elections.”
Enter Proposition 39.
The proposal seeks to improve public confidence in elections with a simple rule: voters must present a government-issued ID when voting in person or include the last four digits of a government-issued ID that corresponds to identification used at the time of registration on the ballots they intend to mail in. For those who do not have such identification, the measure calls for free identification to be provided for voting.
It also requires election officials to maintain accurate voter registration lists and “use best efforts” to verify citizenship attestations. Finally, it directs regular audits by the State Auditor to ensure compliance with these rules and offer recommendations for how to improve election integrity.
There’s nothing radical about these recommendations
There’s nothing radical about these recommendations. Thirty six states require voters to present some form of identification when voting. Such a requirement is commonplace around the world, including in Canada and Mexico. The logic of identification requirements is quite obvious: it’s simply another check to ensure that people are who they say they are when they vote. In fact, poll workers in California already ask first-time federal election voters who didn’t include an ID number at the time of registration for ID if they show up to the polls.
Opponents of voter identification requirements counter that requiring voters to provide identification at the polls is an unacceptable barrier to democratic participation. We disagree. If people can clear the “barrier” of presenting an ID to buy cigarettes or alcohol or use a credit card or get on an airplane, they can present ID to vote.
Opponents likewise counter that requiring voters to write the last four digits of their ID on their ballots introduces a failure point or privacy risk. We are sympathetic to privacy concerns, though such concerns would be more serious if the rule was to write the total ID number. And the failure point is real — what if voters write the wrong numbers? — but fixable. Ballots can be cured.
Research on the impact of such rules has
Research on the impact of such rules has been mixed over the years, with one review published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2019 finding that “strict identification laws are unlikely to have a meaningful impact on turnout or election outcomes.” Echoing this is an analysis published by the journal Research & Politics in December 2024 which found “no compelling evidence that strict voter ID laws consistently suppress or boost voter turnout. Rather, the modest and opposing impacts across contexts appear to net out to minimal aggregate effects on participation, consistent with research showing that electoral reforms often produce small equilibrium effects.”
What could be the most controversial component of the measure is its mandate that election officials use “best efforts” to verify citizenship attestations using “government data.” The measure does not define these terms, thus giving the state and election officials room to figure out how to do that in the most reasonable manner possible. While this editorial board isn’t of the view that noncitizen voting is rampant, it doesn’t seem irrational to occasionally confirm people who attest to their citizenship actually are citizens.
If passed, we expect legal fights over the proposition as a whole and an adjustment period as it’s worked out. Combining the convenience of voting with basic verification isn’t voter suppression — it’s just common-sense governance. Vote Yes on Proposition 39.
