Wisconsin, one of the seven presidential battlegrounds states, could become one of just a handful of states to have voter ID requirements enshrined in its state constitution.
A total of 36 states have some form of ID requirement to vote, although only 22 require photo IDs, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
However, only a few states have it in their constitution. In 2011, Mississippi adopted it in the state constitution, and Arkansas and Nebraska passed similar constitutional amendments in the following years.
Nevada—also a battleground state—was the most recent to adopt voter ID requirements in its state constitution in a ballot measure in November
Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled Legislature approved Assembly Joint Resolution 1 to put the voter ID measure on the ballot for the state’s April 1 election, when voters will cast ballots for a seat on the state Supreme Court.
Wisconsin already has a voter ID law, but if the Legislature were to change hands, a constitutional amendment would make it more difficult to do away with. Gov. Tony Evers is a Democrat, and the state’s elected Supreme Court is controlled by Democrats.
Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, who signed the voter ID law in 2011, stressed in a post on X last week that the law can be protected from an activist state Supreme Court if it is in the state constitution.
“We made it easy to vote, but hard to cheat, when I signed a law requiring photo identification to cast a ballot,” Walker said in the post. “Now, Wisconsin voters can ensure an activist court can’t take this commonsense reform away by voting to put it in the state constitution.”
The Legislature approved the ballot measure on a mostly party-line vote, with Democrats opposing and Republicans backing it.
State Rep. Francesca Hong, a Democrat, blasted the proposed amendment as “voter suppression.”
“Today, my Republican colleagues in the legislature prioritized protecting their power over the people of Wisconsin by passing AJR-1,” Hong said in a post on X. “They chose enshrining voter suppression into the constitution over passing legislation to help working people save money and cut living costs.”
As explained in my book “The Myth of Voter Suppression,” states with voter ID laws typically have higher turnout during elections, and such laws consistently have had the support of about 70% to 80% of the public in most polls across party and racial demographics.
Opponents of voter ID laws made dark predictions that didn’t come true, noted state Sen. Howard Marklein, a Republican, during a floor speech earlier this month.
“We just haven’t had many issues. This is so well ingrained in the public, which I think is why there is such broad-based acceptance,” he said. “There are so many things we can’t do in our lives right now without some proof of identity.”
Mississippi first adopted voter ID in its constitution in 2011 when voters approved the measure, and the following year, voters in Minnesota rejected a similar proposal, according to The Associated Press.
In 2018, voters in the states of Arkansas and North Carolina approved a constitutional amendment to required voter ID, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. However, the North Carolina law was struck down in court.
Four years later, Nebraska voters approved Initiative 432 to require voters to present photo ID, and went into effect in 2024, according to Ballotpedia. Meanwhile, Nevada voters approved a similar constitutional amendment in November.
This article was originally published at www.dailysignal.com
