CDCE study shows 1 in 10 eligible voters can't easily show proof of citizenship
As the House of Representatives considers requiring citizens to show proof of citizenship to vote, CDCE research continues to bring needed context to debates about voting access in the United States.
21.3 million voting-age U.S. citizens cannot readily access proof of citizenship.
Newly released data from a survey CDCE conducted with the Brennan Center, Vote Riders, and Public Wise shows that over 9% of voting-age citizens, or 21.3 million people, cannot readily access documentary proof of citizenship (DPOC), either because they do not have it at all or because they could not access it easily if needed. While some groups are less likely to have DPOC, millions from all demographic and political groups don't have easy access to DPOC. For example, independents are more likely to be unable to readily access DPOC (13%, or almost 4.5 million) than Democrats (10%, or just under 9.7 million) and Republicans (7%, or over 7.1 million).
3.8 million voting-age U.S. citizens lack ANY form of documentary proof of citizenship.
Just under 2% of voting-age American citizens, or over 3.8 million people, lack ANY form of DPOC. This means 3.8 million voting-age American citizens do not have a birth certificate, passport, naturalization certificate, or a certificate of citizenship. This disproportionately affects marginalized racial and ethnic groups, as 3% of People of Color lack any form of DPOC, compared to 1% of White Americans.
CDCE’s ongoing research on who lacks ID and documentary proof of citizenship gives policy makers and the public the facts they need to engage constructively in debates about election rules.
In a recent paper about the partisan impact of election rules, Eitan Hersh and Justin Grimmer describe the way policy makers and the public often bring assumptions rather than facts to debates about election rules:
Election laws in general - from voter identification and felon disenfranchisement to automatic registration and no-excuse mail voting - are presumed to have the intent or effect of influencing who votes, and in turn, they are expected to impact partisan election outcomes. Such policies are highly polarizing. They are passed by legislatures along partisan lines and sometimes litigated in court. Many people express dismay about laws they disagree with, arguing the laws have dire consequences for American democracy, such as they generate fraud or they amount to “democratic backsliding.”
Often policy makers and the public make these assumptions without grounding them in sound research. We saw an example of this dynamic last month when House Speaker Mike Johnson expressed his own thoughts on the issue of requiring all voters to show documentary proof of citizenship:
We all know intuitively that a lot of [undocumented immigrants] are voting in federal elections, but it's not been something that is easily provable. We don't have that number.
To be clear, Speaker Johnson is wrong about not having “that number.” Research from our colleagues at the Brennan Center has shown definitively that non-citizen voting in federal elections is exceedingly rare. But policy makers and the public are asking other important questions that we are seeking to answer with this research. How many Americans don’t have the ID they need to vote? Would proposals that make voter ID laws more strict or require documentary proof of citizenship to vote dramatically expand how many people are being disenfranchised? Are there voters who are being discouraged from voting because they are confused about what documents their state requires voters to show?
These are urgent questions as more and more states and the U.S. Congress consider various versions of these proposals. The details matter a lot. For example, our research has shown the dramatic difference between how many people are impacted by requiring voters to show any form of government ID as opposed to requiring voters to show a government ID that matches the name and address on their voter registration records (2.6 million vs 34.5 million people nationwide). As more states and Congress consider these types of proposals, we plan to continue pursuing this research with our partners at VoteRiders, Brennan Center and Public Wise to provide current and regionally relevant data to the public when these policies are being considered.
Understanding Voter ID and similar proposals in the broader context of “administrative burden”
As Don Moynihan has noted, Voter ID laws and laws requiring documentary proof of citizenship to vote fall into a pattern of proposals that “increase burdens on voters without providing substantial public benefits.” In the case of documentary proof of citizenship, our research suggests that the proposal currently before the House of Representatives could burden millions of Americans with the task of searching for their birth certificate even though research has shown that there is very little public benefit to this requirement.
Yet public opinion about Voter ID requirements in particular have stood out compared to other proposals that reduce administrative burdens in voting like Same Day Registration or Automatic Voter Registration. The public consistently has shown strong support for Voter ID requirements across party and racial lines even through Voter ID requirements increase administrative burdens in the voting process. More research is needed to understand if that support is because people do not perceive Voter ID requirements to be burdensome or because people perceive the burdens to be producing public benefit.
But one important finding in our research is that a bi-partisan super majority of voters appear to support decreasing the administrative burdens that make it difficult for people to get photo IDs and documentary proof of citizenship in the first place.
There are important and difficult public conversations to be had about making sure that no eligible voters are disenfranchised because they lack ID whether they are elderly people who have given up their driver’s license, Amish people who don’t have their picture taken for religious reasons, residential college students attending school far from where they grew up, or the brother of the chair of the Alabama Republican Party who believes getting Voter ID is the “mark of the beast.” We hope our research can inform those conversations about how we can more effectively include all eligible voters no matter their ID status, religious beliefs, or other life circumstances.
Voter ID laws are a fact of life for the foreseeable future in many parts of the country. At some point, they may become federal policy as well. Our research suggests that there may be promising opportunities to address their disenfranchising effects and improve people’s lives in other ways by improving access to the documents that Voter ID laws require of people.
What’s next for CDCE research on these issues
There is urgent and ongoing work to be done expanding public knowledge about Who lacks ID and DPOC in America today. Every day the population is changing and we need to replicate this survey in the future to track changes over time. More urgently, so much important legislative action is happening at the state level but the only results we have right now are at the national level.
That’s why this summer CDCE and our partners are fielding surveys in Georgia and Texas to understand how those states’ specific laws affect voters. These surveys will be the first of their kind to look at these issues at the state level and we are excited to see what they can teach us about which voters are impacted by their state Voter ID laws.
Outside of this partnership, we also continue our work exploring Modern American Suffrage Movements like Vote 16 and Resident Non-Citizen Voting that seek to challenge the current boundaries that municipalities, states, and the federal government use to separate voters from non-voters. Throughout American history, there have been contentious public debates about who should be included in the electorate and what administrative burdens eligible voters should have to overcome to exercise their voting rights. As we enter the final months of a presidential election where these debates will be at the forefront of public conversation, we hope that our research at CDCE can continue to provide the context and quality data that the public and policy makers need to engage constructively in these debates with facts and not assumptions.
Sam Novey is Chief Strategist at the UMD Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement. Mike Hanmer is Director of UMD’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement and the Michael Miller Endowed Faculty Fellow in Government and Politics.