: Establishes Additional Voter Identification And Citizenship Verification Requirements. Initiative Constitutional Amendment.
Sacramento, California –
California Secretary of State Dr. Shirley N. Weber, Ph.D., announced
that the proponents of a new initiative were cleared to begin
collecting petition signatures on September 19, 2025.
The
Attorney General prepares the legal title and summary that is required
to appear on initiative petitions. When the official language is
complete, the Attorney General forwards it to the proponent and to the
Secretary of State, and the initiative may be circulated for
signatures. The Secretary of State then provides a calendar of
deadlines to the proponent(s) and to county elections officials. The
Attorney General’s official title and summary for the measure is as
follows:
ESTABLISHES ADDITIONAL VOTER IDENTIFICATION AND CITIZENSHIP VERIFICATION REQUIREMENTS. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Under
current law, when registering to vote, individuals must state under
penalty of perjury that they are United States citizens and provide
information to verify their identity (e.g., birthdate, driver’s license
or Social Security number). This measure would amend the California Constitution to further require that:
- voters
present government-issued identification at the polls or the last four
digits of a government-issued identification number when voting by
mail;
- the State provide voter identification cards on request; and
- elections officials annually report percentage of each county’s voters whose citizenship they have verified.
Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local governments: One-time
state and local government costs in the tens of millions of dollars to
prepare for implementation of the measure. Increased annual state and
local government costs potentially ranging in the tens of millions of
dollars to the low hundreds of millions of dollars to fulfill new
requirements related to elections administration. (25-0007A1.)
The Secretary of State’s tracking number for this measure is 1984 and the Attorney General's tracking number is 25-0007A1.
The
proponents of the measure, Carl DeMaio, Tony Strickland, and Donald J.
DiCostanzo, must collect signatures of 874,641 registered voters (eight
percent of the total votes cast for governor in the November 2022
general election) in order for the measure to become eligible for the
ballot. The proponent has 180 days to circulate petitions for the
measure, meaning the signatures must be submitted to county elections
officials no later than March 18, 2026. The address for the proponents is c/o Carl DeMaio, P.O. Box 27227, San Diego, CA 92198. The proponents may also be contacted at carl@carldemaio.com and (619) 806-0698.
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