Ohio voters could decide in November whether they want to enshrine its photo ID law into the state constitution. A new poll suggests the voter verification protection is very popular in the Buckeye State — as it is throughout the country.
Last week, Ohio’s Republican-controlled state Senate easily passed (22-9) a joint resolution that would send a constitutional amendment ballot question to voters. Every Democrat voted against the measure.
The resolution now moves to the GOP-led House, where it must pass with a three-fifths majority. Republicans have the votes, but some conservatives want to see photo ID for absentee ballots enshrined in Ohio’s constitution as well. That likely will have to be a battle for a different day.
Ohio’s photo ID law went into effect in 2023. The Buckeye State is among 10 states that exclusively require individuals to show photo ID to vote in elections, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Wisconsin voters last year overwhelmingly approved enshrining photo ID at the polls in their state constitution.
Following Wednesday’s vote, Ohio Senate President Rob McColley told reporters that he expects the ballot question will receive overwhelming support, asserting it’s “the type of protection that voters want to see in the system.”
They sure do.
76 Percent
Over the weekend, Honest Elections Project Action released a poll that found 86 percent of likely Ohio voters surveyed believe that photo ID should be required to vote at the polls. It’s a bipartisan issue, with photo ID backed by 99 percent of Republicans polled, 90 percent of independents, and 69 percent of Democrats.
And the poll found 76 percent of respondents would vote for a constitutional amendment requiring voters to show photo ID — 54 percent strongly in favor.
“The Ohio House should quickly pass SJR 10, sending a ballot issue to voters to make voter ID permanent by enshrining it into the state constitution,” Jason Snead, executive director of Honest Elections Project Action, said in a statement to The Federalist. “The Buckeye State deserves to have honest elections where it’s easy to vote and hard to cheat.”
Honest Elections questioned 800 respondents from May 27 to June 2. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.46 percent.
The poll also found 70 percent of likely voters questioned said they would vote for an amendment requiring mail-in voters write their driver’s license number or the last four digits of the Social Security number on the ballot, and 69 percent would back an amendment requiring mail ballots include a copy of the voter’s ID.
Here’s another important number for the GOP in a midterm election year traditionally not kind to the party in power: 86 percent of the poll’s respondents said they’d be more likely to vote in November — 52 percent much more likely — if the constitutional amendment question were on the ballot.
Ohio has a critical U.S Senate race, pitting incumbent Republican John Husted against far-left former Sen. Sherrod Brown. The Democrat lost his seat two years ago to Republican Bernie Moreno.
‘The Nationwide Standard’
Ohio’s Senate did what the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate has failed to do: pass photo ID legislation.
Last week, Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Thom Tills, R-N.C., helped kill an effort to pass the SAVE America Act. The Senate’s biggest RINOs joined Democrats to stop a move to advance the bill requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote in U.S. elections and photo ID to cast a ballot in them. They voted against attaching the measure to the $70 billion reconciliation bill to fund federal immigration law enforcement.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has repeatedly said he doesn’t have the votes to nuke the filibuster to get around the 60-vote threshold to pass the bill. Senate Republican leadership, allergic to work and political courage, don’t have the stones to fight for passage of the critical election integrity bill via the talking filibuster, which would force Democrats hold the floor and continuously debate to prevent a vote on a bill that is four times more popular than Congress.
In lobbying for the SAVE America Act earlier this year on the Senate floor, Husted pushed back against Democrats’ hyperbolic claims that photo ID laws disenfranchise voters.
“Since Ohio required photo ID law at the polls, there has been no evidence of voter suppression,” the senator said. “In fact, the 2024 election produced the second-highest turnout that we’ve had in the past four presidential elections. We should make this the nationwide standard.”
Ohio voters could soon make photo ID the constitutionally enshrined standard in their state.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
