Photo ID for Voting

Across party lines, Americans say that voters should be required to provide photo identification when voting. Yet states are nearly evenly split between requiring and not requiring photo ID, and the topic is hotly debated by advocacy groups and many politicians. Why the disconnect?

The short answer: Activists on both sides feel strongly about the issue, mostly for symbolic reasons. Supporters see it as crucial to election integrity and fighting voter fraud. Opponents see it as part of a long-running history of laws to suppress certain groups of voters. The symbolism prevails because extensive research suggests photo ID doesn’t have the fraud-fighting effects supporters tout, nor does it have the vote-suppressing effects that opponents fear.

This leaves activists feuding while the non-activist public mostly favors photo ID not for ideological reasons but because it feels like the normal way to identify oneself.

The Polling

Cross-partisan support for photo ID has existed for a long time. Here is a recent example:

Largely left unpolled is a relevant question: If you favor photo ID, what should happen if a voter does not have a photo ID? Because voting is considered a right that should be equally available, the answer is not straightforward. It has been addressed in different ways by different states.

The Legal Landscape

Elections are mostly administered by states. Each state makes its own voting laws, so different states have different policies on voter identification.

The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) reported that as of April 2025:

• 23 states asked voters for a photo ID. Examples of commonly accepted photo IDs include a driver’s license, state-issued non-driver ID card, passport, military ID or student ID.

• 13 states also accepted non-photo documentation like a bank statement with the person’s name and address, matching their voter registration.

• The other states verified voters against registration records by other means, usually comparing written signatures.

Of the states that require photo ID, there was a further split about how to handle people who do not meet the requirement:

• 10 photo ID states were “strict”: If a voter does not have a qualifying ID, the voter is told to return with one. Some states allow a provisional ballot to be completed, but the voter must return with a qualified photo ID for the ballot to be counted.

• The other photo ID states were “non-strict”: As an exception, they allow the voter to be identified by poll workers in other ways, such as a signature check or a poll worker’s personal knowledge of the voter’s identity within the community.

Photo ID laws exist in the framework of a 2008 Supreme Court case, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board. In that case, the Court upheld Indiana’s photo ID law. It cited a lack of evidence that a significant number of voters were or would be harmed by the law, especially given the availability of state identification cards for free.

Activist Perspectives

The split on photo ID is more among ideological activists than normal voters:

• Activist supporters see photo ID as crucial to stopping voter fraud and preserving election integrity. With President Trump setting the tone, they assert that many elections are rife with voter fraud, particularly by noncitizens voting illegally. They position photo ID as a popular, common-sense response. In their view, it’s a basic safeguard that only those seeking to exploit lax rules would oppose.

• Activist opponents see photo ID as a scheme to suppress certain groups’ votes. They point to a long history of rules—literacy tests, poll taxes, residency requirements—that were designed to suppress voting by Black Americans and other disfavored groups while appearing race-neutral on their face. To opponents, photo ID fits that pattern: a requirement that sounds reasonable but falls disproportionately on people without driver’s licenses or passports, who skew poor, elderly, and nonwhite.

But the evidence suggests that both sides’ assumptions are flawed:

• Supporters’ concerns about fraud aren’t meaningfully addressed by photo ID. The scenario that photo ID addresses—one person voting in the place of someone else—has proven extremely rare. A review of alleged impersonation cases from 2000 to 2014 found 31 credible incidents out of more than one billion ballots cast. Other types of voter fraud potentially exist, but photo ID does not solve for them.

• Opponents’ concerns about voter suppression haven’t come true in states that adopted photo ID requirements. The most comprehensive study on the topic analyzed elections between 2008 and 2018. Regarding the potential effects on voter suppression, it concluded: “Strict ID laws’ overall effects do not increase over time, they remain close to zero and nonsignificant whether the election is a midterm or presidential election, and whether the laws are the more restrictive type that stipulate photo IDs.”

The result is a policy that’s produced a lot less good or bad than activists predicted. Faced with this, activists revert to the symbolic importance of photo ID: it’s a symbol of America’s commitment to election integrity, or it’s a symbol of America’s tradition of unequal voting rights.

Of course, both sides not only believe their position is symbolically necessary, they also believe it helps their side win elections—something that is only said out loud sometimes.

The Non-Activist View

Meanwhile, there’s the less ideologically engaged public. Most people appear to favor photo ID because it’s the familiar way to identify oneself in situations that require it, not because it fulfills a particular ideological narrative or agenda. So when asked, “Do you favor or oppose requiring people to show valid photo identification before they are permitted to vote?” it’s not surprising that most people say “Yes.” This is especially the case when asked, as it normally is, without reference to alternate methods of identification. By itself, the question could easily be seen as simply asking whether we should verify who’s voting—something that’s not controversial.

The Fight Continues

The fight around photo ID continues largely because it has become symbolically entangled with other disputes about election legitimacy, voting access, race, partisanship, and trust. Further complicating the situation is the recent inclusion of a photo ID requirement in the SAVE America Act, a bill that passed the House but faces long odds in the Senate. The bill started as 2025’s Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. Its main feature was a requirement for proof of citizenship when registering to vote. With the SAVE America Act, photo ID is part of the mix too—no longer just symbolically entangled with other voting policies, now literally so.

But must photo ID remain a point of division in law when it is not particularly divisive in public opinion? Although it sorts mostly along red-state / blue-state lines, there are exceptions. Red states like Alaska, Utah, and Oklahoma do not require photo ID; blue Rhode Island does. Perhaps a national norm will emerge around what roughly a dozen states already have: photo ID but with exceptions. There would still be arguments about which exceptions to allow, but it would be one step toward the common ground where most Americans already stand on the issue.