Wisconsin voters could be struck by a feeling of déjà vu next Tuesday.
On their way into the polling place, they will see an official notice telling them that they are required to show photo identification. Then on the ballot, they will see a question asking whether to add that requirement to the state constitution.
It’s the second time in five months that the Republican-controlled Legislature has asked voters to approve an amendment that ostensibly does nothing except enshrine a state law in the constitution. But, like the November question on prohibiting non-citizens from voting, opponents say the April 1 voter identification referendum is grounded in a history of debunked election fraud conspiracy theories and political maneuvering, along with a potential future of continuing to raise hurdles to voting.
The current voter ID law may be preventing more than 200,000 Wisconsin residents from voting, a new study finds, and they’re disproportionately low-income and elderly.
Yet the law has strong public support, and GOP lawmakers want to cement it in the constitution to prevent it from being overturned by the state Supreme Court or repealed by a future Democratic Legislature.
Republicans portray voter ID as an issue of election security.
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“Ensuring that each voter casts the proper ballot is central to the integrity of any election,” state Rep. Patrick Snyder (R-Weston), the amendment’s Assembly sponsor, told a legislative committee in January. “Wisconsin’s voter ID requirement has been widely successful in preserving election integrity and ensuring that citizens are confident that the ballots cast are legitimate.”
Voter confidence might have been shaken by years of unsupported GOP claims of voter fraud, most notably President Donald Trump’s groundless allegations that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him. But multiple reviews by government agencies and both liberal and conservative organizations have found that voter fraud is both rare and isolated, not part of any large-scale conspiracies.
And in-person voter impersonation, the only type of fraud that photo ID might prevent, is “almost nonexistent,” the League of Women Voters argues, pointing to a Brennan Center for Justice finding that it affects only four in 10 million ballots cast nationwide. That’s 0.00004%. Of 212 voting irregularities that Wisconsin municipal clerks referred to district attorneys from February 2018 through June 2023, only two alleged in-person voter impersonation, compared with 95 address issues, 92 instances of double voting (voting both absentee and in-person or voting in two different communities) and 23 other violations, state Elections Commission reports show.
Under current state law, voters must show a driver’s license or one of several other forms of photo ID before they are allowed to cast a ballot. A voter who doesn’t have acceptable identification can cast a provisional ballot, but it won’t be counted unless the voter comes back with the required ID before the end of the week.
And many of those voters don’t come back, says Bryna Godar, a staff attorney for the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative. She pointed to state Elections Commission data that showed 682 provisional ballots were cast in the November election, including 547 by voters lacking ID, but only 149 were ultimately counted.
Wisconsin has strict ID law
Wisconsin has one of the strictest voter identification laws in the nation, according to the National Council of State Legislatures. Only eight other states – Indiana, Kansas, Ohio, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina and Tennessee – have laws that match Wisconsin’s requirement that only provisional ballots can be cast without photo ID.
Of the 36 states that require voters to show ID at the polls, Iowa and 13 others accept identification without photos. Another 13 states request photo IDs but have less stringent rules, such as Michigan’s provision that voters without IDs can cast regular ballots if they sign affidavits attesting to their eligibility. The remaining 14 states and the District of Columbia verify voters’ identities through other methods, such as comparing their signatures at the polls to those on file from their registration. That includes Illinois and Minnesota, both of which require voters to sign affidavits.
Despite those variations, “Nationally, verifiable incidents of voter fraud are very low both with voter ID and without voter ID,” Godar says.
In its original form, Wisconsin’s law would have been America’s strictest when it was first enacted in 2011, right after Republicans won full control of state government. But multiple court challenges led to revisions – such as expanding the range of acceptable identification and requiring the Division of Motor Vehicles to provide free photo ID cards to voters without driver’s licenses – and delayed implementation until 2016.
The lawsuits alleged that the law unconstitutionally restricted the right to vote and that certain groups, such as people of color, were disproportionately disadvantaged. Expert witnesses estimated at the time that 300,000 registered voters lacked photo ID, including 63,000 in Milwaukee County alone.
Republicans typically dismiss those concerns by pointing out that photo identification is needed for many other reasons – like buying alcohol – and now everyone can get a free state ID if they don’t have a driver’s license.
And yet thousands of state residents still don’t have photo ID. A recent study by John D. Johnson, research fellow at the Marquette Law School’s Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education, estimates that 290,000 voting-age Wisconsin residents lack either a driver’s license or a state-issued ID card – not substantially less than before the free-ID policy was enacted.
The politics of voter ID
While that is only 6% of the population, it’s a politically significant number in the nation’s most closely divided state, where the last three presidential elections and the last two senatorial elections were decided by less than 30,000 votes each, says Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee). Nick Ramos, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, points to a dip in turnout in 2016, the first November election after voter ID took effect, but Johnson adds that turnout has rebounded and increased since.
Johnson found the groups least likely to have DMV-issued ID cards are those living in poverty, 18- and 19-year-olds and older adults. Many of these groups lean Democratic, giving Republicans a strong interest in preventing them from voting, Larson says.
“It’s 100% political,” Larson says. “That’s the only reason they’re doing this. It has nothing to do with their stated reason of improving election security.”
Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine), the amendment’s Senate sponsor, did not respond to emails requesting an interview.
Although some of the under-20 crowd will have college IDs, not all student IDs are considered acceptable for voting, Godar and Ramos note. Passports and military, veterans and Wisconsin tribal ID cards are also accepted.
Ramos knows why so many people don’t have IDs. In two previous jobs, his mission was to help people obtain identification to vote.
Rural voters often must travel long distances to DMV offices. If voters don’t have required supporting documents, like birth certificates, they may need to travel to courthouses and pay copying fees. That might involve taking time off work. And even though the DMV is supposed to help people through those steps, not everyone knows that help is available or that they need to plan in advance to have ID for voting, Ramos and Godar say.
“It’s a place of privilege that a lot of people are talking from” when they claim it’s easy to obtain photo ID, Ramos says. “Not everybody in society is the same” and those who are struggling to get by may not be able to invest the time and energy needed to obtain ID for voting, he says.
The impact of an amendment
While the amendment would protect the photo ID requirement from repeal, opinions differ on how much the law could change. The amendment allows the Legislature to approve exceptions to the requirement, and Ramos says he’s hopeful about statements by Rep. Scott Krug (R-Rome) voicing openness to tweaks.
However, the ACLU of Wisconsin says the amendment’s wording would prevent lawmakers from adding some other forms of identification, such as photo ID cards issued by municipalities or employers. Sen. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit) has warned it also could hamper technological advances, such as substituting biometrics for photos.
Conversely, Larson says he fears that the combination of this amendment and the citizenship voting amendment approved in November could empower the Legislature to require proof of citizenship for voting every time, not just voter registration. The U.S. Supreme Court blocked a similar Arizona law from applying to federal elections, and the Arizona Supreme Court eventually threw it out for state and local elections as well.
Such questions help explain why most states keep detailed voting rules in statutes that can be amended more easily than constitutions, Godar says. Arkansas, Mississippi, Nebraska and North Carolina voters have approved amendments requiring photo ID, while a 2016 Missouri amendment allows lawmakers to require it and a 2022 Michigan amendment prohibits a strict photo ID requirement, according to a paper by Godar. Minnesota voters defeated a photo ID amendment in 2012, while Nevada voters gave preliminary approval to one in 2024, in the first of two required referenda.
Although the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign is leading opposition to the amendment on Tuesday’s ballot, opponents aren’t holding out much hope that it will be defeated. A Marquette Law School poll found 77% support for requiring photo ID and 73% support for the amendment itself. And state voters usually approve constitutional amendments in the absence of a well-funded “vote no” campaign. Nobody has mounted such a campaign this time, when vast sums of donor money are pouring into the high-stakes Supreme Court race.
Some political observers have suggested that GOP lawmakers scheduled previous constitutional amendment referenda on hot-button topics to boost conservative turnout in pivotal elections. With ideological control of the high court at stake Tuesday, Ramos thinks that could be happening again. By contrast, Larson thinks the timing is aimed at ensuring the photo ID requirement remains in place for the 2028 presidential election.
But even if the amendment wasn’t timed to coincide with the Supreme Court election, it’s still an issue in that campaign.
Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, the liberal candidate in the officially nonpartisan race, was a private attorney representing the League of Women Voters when it filed suit to overturn the original voter ID law in 2011. Her conservative opponent, Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, took over the state’s defense of the law after he was elected attorney general as a Republican in 2014.
That means voters Tuesday will choose not only whether to approve the photo ID amendment, but also whether to promote a leading advocate or a leading opponent of the current law to the state’s highest court.
