Summary
Nevada Question 7 is a citizen-initiated constitutional amendment that would require “Each voter in Nevada” to “present photo identification to verify their identity when voting in person at a polling place during early voting or on election day before being provided a ballot.”
The amendment was qualified for the 2024 ballot in July 2024. As a proposed constitutional amendment, it would need to be approved by a majority of voters in successive elections. In other words, if the initiative is approved in 2024, it will need to be approved again in 2026 before taking effect.
Fiscal Impact
Legislative staff evaluated the prospective fiscal impact of the initiative in July 2024. Staff determined the initiative would require the secretary of state’s office to implement new systems for verifying voter identification and these changes would cost $6,750.
Legislative staff also assumed that any “alternative form of voter identification will be provided to the voter at no cost, which means that the cost for these identification documents will be wholly borne by the State or by one or more local governments.” The initiative does not specify what these documents would look like or which agency would issue them, however, so staff concluded this cost “cannot be determined with any reasonable degree of certainty.”
Proponents’ Arguments
Repair the Vote is a committee organized to sponsor the initiative. On its website, the organization says, “All people need to have confidence that those who vote are the duly registered residents of Nevada and that ballots are handled fairly and accurately…When voters lose faith in the process that drives elections, they also lose faith in the outcome and in the legitimacy of those declared the winners.”
Repair the Vote points to a February 2023 poll of Nevada voters in which 74% of respondents indicated they favor a voter identification requirement, including 62% of Democrats, 68% of nonpartisans, and 93% of Republicans. The organization claims an initiative is required to make the change because the Nevada Legislature has never granted a hearing to a voter identification proposal.
Opponents’ Arguments
No formal entity has been formed to oppose the Nevada Voter Identification Initiative. However, opponents to voter identification laws typically claim these laws exclude eligible voters from being able to participate in elections. The Brennan Center for Justice, for instance, claims that 11% of eligible voters do not possess a valid form of photo identification and that this population is concentrated among seniors, minorities, students and people with disabilities.
Discussion
Nevada is currently one of 11 states that requires voters to present no form of identification, but voters do need to sign their names at their polling location or on their mail-in ballot. Following a change in law in 2020, a mail-in ballot is automatically sent to all voters, and these may either be remitted directly by a voter or collected by unregistered third parties and remitted to a secure drop box. Twenty-four states require voters to present photo identification to vote on election day and another 11 allow voters to provide other forms of identification.
The Voter Identification Initiative would not impose a strict voter identification requirement, as it would allow a number of options. The photo identification can be:
- a Nevada driver’s license;
- any identification card issued by any state or the federal government;
- any employee identification card issued by the federal government, the state of Nevada or any local government authority in Nevada;
- a U.S. passport;
- a military identification card;
- any student identification card issued by a public college or university in Nevada;
- any tribal identification card;
- a Nevada concealed firearms permit; or
- any other government-issued identification card that the legislature approves.
A voter would need to submit one of these forms of photo identification that is either currently valid or expired for no more than four years. A voter aged 70 or older could present identification that has been expired for any length of time.
The initiative would also require voters who cast mail-in ballots to verify their identity by providing the last four digits of either their Nevada driver’s license number or their Social Security number. If the voter does not have either of these numbers, they could verify a number provided to them by the county clerk when they register to vote. These identifiers are required on mail-in ballots in Minnesota, which the MIT Elections Performance Index ranks as the second best electoral framework in the nation.
Polls indicate that voter identification laws are incredibly popular. In a 2022 national poll by Gallup, 79% of respondents favored a requirement for voters to provide photo identification prior to voting, including 97% of Republicans, 84% of independents and 53% of Democrats. Although these figures indicate some difference of opinion along party lines, Americans of different racial backgrounds tend to support voter identification requirements at similar rates. Among respondents to the Gallup poll, 77% of people of color support voter identification requirements while 80% of white respondents supported this policy.
Critics of voter identification laws frequently point to a 2016 study that examined data between 2006 and 2014 and concluded that “strict identification laws have a differentially negative impact on the turnout of racial and ethnic minorities in primaries and general elections.” This effect was most pronounced among Hispanic voters, with Hispanic turnout declining 7.1% in general elections that have voter identification requirements.
However, a peer review of the same data by Stanford researchers disputed these findings. In particular, the data source used for the original study was incomplete and unreliable and failed to control for other factors that might have influenced the data. The reviewers found that there was no clear effect of voter identification requirements on voter turnout once these issues were corrected. This conclusion is consistent with a meta-analysis (which analyzes the overall outcome of a large group of studies) of studies by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which shows that voter identification requirements have little to no impact on voter turnout.
Given that even strict voter identification requirements do not have a significant effect on voter turnout, it’s also unlikely that these requirements would affect electoral outcomes one way or another. While proponents appear motivated to dissuade the potential for voter fraud and opponents are concerned about the effects on voter turnout, there is minimal evidence that voter identification accomplishes either. However, these laws are overwhelmingly popular and may serve to improve perceived voter confidence in the electoral process.