A California voter ID initiative has reportedly received the required amount of signatures to appear on the November ballot after passing the 875,000-signature threshold.
Reform California, a nonpartisan political group leading the effort, submitted the “California Voter ID Initiative” petition to county officials with 1.3 million signatures, Fox News reported.
The group added that the petition gained bipartisan support, with signatures coming in from across the cultural and political spectrum.
If the measure passes, it would allow voters to skirt Democrats’ supermajority in the state legislature and amend California’s constitution to mandate voter ID.
It would also require election officials to verify the citizenship status of registered voters and force the state to maintain accurate voter rolls, according to a Reform California press release.
“Polling overwhelmingly shows a supermajority consensus for voter ID requirements,” Reform California’s chairman, Carl DeMaio, a GOP state Assemblyman, said. “The California Voter ID Initiative is a common-sense and bipartisan way to restore the trust and confidence all voters should have in our election system.”
He added, “Divisive politicians with partisan agendas will try to politicize this effort, but the fact remains over 70 percent of voters, including a majority of Democrat voters, support the initiative — and nearly half of the 1.35 million signatures we collected came from Democrats and Independents.”
“It’s common sense,” DeMaio explained. “If you need an ID to board an airplane or buy a pack of cigarettes or buy a case of beer, you should make it pretty easy to use an ID to vote in an election. This is not hard, it’s not rocket science, it’s quite simple.”
Before the initiative officially heads to the ballot, county officials must perform signature verification and report their findings to the state.
California’s current voter ID mechanisms are quite lax.
You must be a citizen to vote; however, individuals need only attest that they are eligible, and they can cast a ballot.
The state has also allowed people without a license or Social Security number to register by providing them with identifier codes, according to Fox News.
Meanwhile, on the California Secretary of State’s website, it reads: “Do I need to show ID to vote in California? In most cases, NO. California does not generally require voters to show identification at the polls.”
It does, however, note that “you may need to show ID only if ALL of the following apply: You’re voting for the first time in a federal election; You registered by mail or online, AND You did not provide your CA ID or SSN when registering.”
Some of the acceptable forms of ID listed on the website don’t even include a photograph. Things like a “utility bill, bank statement, paycheck, or government check, and official mail from a government agency” are allowable.
Despite California’s apparent enthusiasm for voter ID, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has been a vocal critic of President Donald Trump’s efforts to get the “SAVE America Act” passed.
He’s referred to it as “Jim Crow 2.0” and said producing a birth certificate is too burdensome.
“When it comes to registration, you’ve got to find you’ve got to find your birth certificate. If you know where yours is, I have no clue where mine is,” he told Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina earlier this year.
Gavin Newsom tells Jim Clyburn that he’d have trouble complying with the SAVE Act because he doesn’t know where to find his birth certificate:
“You’ve got to find your birth certificate. I have no clue where mine is.”
Good lord. Just beyond parody. pic.twitter.com/mQZqQSXPVF
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) February 19, 2026
If signed into law, the “SAVE Act” would require voters to produce a valid ID and proof of citizenship before registering to vote in a federal election.
Mail-in ballots would also be made illegal, except for illness, disability, military, or travel.
In addition, it would “direct states to remove non-citizens from the voter rolls.”
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