Every eligible citizen should be able to vote without unnecessary barriers.
In a healthy democracy, the right to vote isn’t something you earn or defend and the burden is on the government to make voting easier, not on citizens to prove they deserve to vote.
Voter ID laws undermine that principle by turning a right into privilege that can be lost if you don’t have the right document at the right time.
Since 2020, states across the country have passed new or stricter voter ID laws, often in the name of “election integrity.” But the ultimate cost of such laws is millions of otherwise eligible voters facing new burdens to vote or being blocked entirely — and the cost often falls hardest on voters who have been historically disenfranchised.
Having an ID doesn’t always mean you can vote.
In many states with strict voter ID laws, it isn’t enough to show any kind of ID. The rules typically require a very specific form of government-issued photo identification that exactly matches your name, address and sometimes even your appearance. Common forms of ID that many people have — like a student ID, government employee badge or birth certificate — often don’t qualify.
In Texas, for example, a handgun license is accepted to vote, but a student ID from a public university is not. In North Dakota, voters must present an ID with a residential street address, keeping some Native Americans who live on reservations or those who use P.O. boxes from voting. In Wisconsin, a mismatched address or a missing middle initial can be enough to have a ballot rejected.
A 2024 University of Maryland survey found that 21 million eligible U.S. citizens — nearly one in ten — don’t have a valid driver’s license, the most commonly accepted form of voter ID. Additionally, 28.6 million eligible voters have a valid driver’s license that does not match their current name and address, which can be enough to deny voters in states with stricter laws.
These hurdles don’t affect everyone equally.
Black and Latino voters are more likely to lack specific IDs required and to encounter mismatches in their documents. Over a quarter of Black and Latino citizens do not have a driver’s license with their current name or address, compared to 12% of the national average.
Disparities aren’t just an unfortunate side effect. In some cases, it’s compounded by policies that make those same IDs even harder to get.
After Alabama enacted a strict voter ID law in 2015, state officials announced the closure of 31 DMV licensing offices, primarily in Black-majority districts — effectively blocking the ability of Black voters to get the ID that was now required for them to vote.
Women who have changed their names after marriage or divorce may find their documents won’t be accepted because they don’t align. Older voters may have expired driver’s licenses and may struggle to gather documents to renew them. Students often hold out-of-state licenses or IDs from institutions that their current state of residence won’t accept. Rural, low-income and voters with disabilities may not have reliable transportation to reach an issuing office — especially in rural areas where DMVs are sparse — or the time and money to pay for the documents needed to obtain a government-issued photo ID.
These impacts are not just hypothetical.
In Texas in 2011, more than 600,000 registered voters lacked the required ID when a strict voter ID law went into effect. In the 2016 election when the rule was temporarily paused, over 16,000 Texans who would have been turned away otherwise voted using alternate ID.
Federal courts ruled that the Texas law violated the Voting Rights Act, finding it intentionally discriminated against Black and Latino voters who were up to 250% more likely to lack the required ID. After a federal appeals court ruled the 2011 Texas voter ID was indeed discriminatory, Texas was forced to replace it with a more lenient voter ID law that a federal judge found still had discriminatory effects but was eventually upheld by the same federal appeals court that struck down the original law.
Strict voter ID laws also cause measurable declines in turnout. In Kansas and Tennessee, voter turnout dropped by up to 2.2% after strict ID laws took effect in 2012, with the steepest declines among young, Black and newly registered voters. In competitive elections, a 2–3% suppression of turnout can change outcomes, and indeed partisan operatives have acknowledged that such laws are often pursued for political advantage.
In other words, for many proponents of voter ID, the laws don’t solve the problem of voter fraud — they solve the “problem” of high turnout.
Voter ID laws don’t solve problems, they create them.
Multiple investigations, including those led by Republicans, have found virtually no cases of in-person voter fraud out of hundreds of millions of ballots cast.
A Loyola Law School study identified just 31 credible instances of voter impersonation nationwide between 2000 and 2014 out of more than 1 billion ballots cast.
Supporters of voter ID laws sometimes concede that in-person voter fraud — the only type of fraud these laws theoretically address — is extremely rare. They instead pivot to the argument that even a single fraudulent vote undermines trust in the system.
The reality is that for every one potential fraudulent vote prevented by voter ID, hundreds or thousands of eligible voters are burdened or blocked from casting their ballot.
Voter ID laws, as written and enforced in many states, don’t strengthen democracy — they shrink it. They most often exist to reshape the electorate by removing people who are eligible and ready to vote. The burden falls disproportionately on those who already face systemic barriers, further narrowing participation in a system that works best when more voices are heard.